Before reading, some children find it hard to activate prior knowledge. This activity provides an extra step between total dependence on prompt questions and independent brainstorming. When they can be encouraged to brainstorm a few ideas, they don’t always turn that information into "VOCABULARY" or the words that they might encounter in the text.

The activity was originally devised for Middle Primary boys with reading difficulties, who were not much interested in thinking about what they knew of the topic.

Materials
Charts of topic subcategories:
These vary for books about animals, object, people - match to genre information report, explanation, biographies: what is it? what does it look like? where does it live? what does it eat? with variations for objects, people, activity (sport).

A list of words (number varied to suit need) some which will belong to the topic on the book you’re reading, others will not. Include several blank spaces at the bottom of the list.

Procedure
Read the title and identify the topic (space travel, athletics, etc.)

Select a topic chart (animal, object, people), each person (teacher included) take turn to pick one of the sub-category and relate something they know of the topic to that category.

Give each student a word list. Set the time limit (or first finished), then the students read though the list ticking all of the words they think they might read in the book (topic words). When they reach the bottom, they write several of their own. They can put a question mark or dot beside those they are not sure of.

When times up they count up how many words they ticked. This is their score (which can be manipulated to suit). Then they have turns of reading the words they’ve ticked, ask about any words they are not sure of and read their own.

I’ve found that the lists can have quite a mix of difficulty levels. Words highly pertinent to the topic are more guessable with minimal use of graphophonics. The prior discussion gives them enough context, they can use their limited graphophonic knowledge and the time factor provides the motivation.

Topic pertinent words needn’t be from the actual text. Don’t use up all the obvious words in your list.