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In
the PReP (Langer, 1982) reading strategy, the teacher guides students to think
about their prior knowledge about a topic in three stages. First, the teacher
has students make initial associations about the topic of the text. Then, the
teacher asks students to reflect on those initial associations. Finally, the
teacher guides students in reformulating their prior knowledge.
Langer,
J. (1981). From theory to practice: A prereading plan. Journal of Reading,
25, 152-156.
The
purpose of PReP is to elicit students’
prior knowledge about the topic of the text.
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1. |
Choose
a text.
This strategy works best with expository texts. |
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2. |
Ask,
“Tell me anything that comes to mind when you hear the word
_________.”
This statement encourages students to make free
associations about the topic of the text they will be reading. Students
can free associate as a whole class, or in small groups. If done as a
whole class, the teacher writes on the board the ideas as they are
presented. If done in small groups, student groups are given time to write
down ideas on a piece of paper. These ideas are then shared with the
entire class and the teacher writes them down on the board.
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3. |
Ask,
“What made you think of ___________?” After students run out of free associations, choose
several of the ideas on the board and encourage the student or group that
shared the idea to reflect on the initial association. Other questions you
might ask include, “What does this [the association] have to do with
that [the idea about which the association was made]?” or “Can you
tell me more about __________?” For this step of further reflection, you
might want to choose ideas from the board which may be vague, confusing,
or unusual. |
If your students are going to be
reading a text about recycling, you might ask, “Tell me everything that
comes to mind when you hear the word recycling.”
Students’ initial ideas
might include the following:
Of these ideas, you might want to
follow up on puppets, money, and garbage. These are ideas
for which the connections that the student or group was making who supplied the
thought may not have been clear to the rest of the class.
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Teacher Question |
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Possible
Student Response |
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What made you think of puppets? |
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Last
summer we went to the Earth Day Festival. We made puppets out of things
people would have otherwise thrown away, like old socks, buttons, and
small scraps of fabric. |
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What does money have to do with recycling? |
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The
more we recycle, the less garbage there is. And the less garbage there is,
the fewer landfills we'll need. |
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What made you think of garbage? |
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I
heard that a lot of landfills are running out of room. More people need to
recycle so that doesn't happen.
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Based on our discussion and before we read the text, do you have any new
ideas about recycling? |
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I
heard that a lot of landfills are running out of room. More people need to
recycle so that doesn't happen.
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When we were talking about what money
has to do with recycling, I was thinking that people save money by buying
recycled produce. They're usually cheaper. Also, reusing things is a lot
cheaper than buying new things!
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We should put "reuse" on the
board. Reusing is recycling. In my family we reuse things all the time.
Empty jelly jars make good glasses to drink out of. And I've got a juice
can on my desk at home that holds my pens and pencils. |
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