FREEBIE: An Interactive Reader's Notebook Page

Our focus this week is making predictions and hypothesizing about information in a text.  While this is an extension of our learning with inferential questions, it is vocabulary that students need to have to understand what it means to predict and hypothesize. 

My hook...the students will walk into the classroom to find a bucket of water balloons on the floor in front of the classroom.  I will ask them to predict on a post-it what they think the balloons are going to be utilized for?  They will display their post-its on chart paper.  We will then read aloud the different predictions. 

Possible prediction: We are going to throw them at the 5th graders as they head out to recess.

Upon completing their prediction post-it, I will ask them based on their prediction, what they hypothesize might happen if the water balloons were utilized for that purpose?  They will then record their hypothesis onto another post-it and place it on chat paper.  We will share again.

Possible hypothesis: We will have to clean up the mess, we will be in a HUGE amount of trouble, and Mrs. Beers might not be our teacher any longer for allowing us to make this poor choice...

Here is a simple interactive Reader's Notebook flap that I created for students to utilize when discussing this concept and to keep as a tool they can utilize later in the year.   While I don't suspect they will soon forget what it means to predict and hypothesize, we will create an anchor chart with the same terms displayed, discuss the meaning of these words based on our water balloon hook, and add this information drafted on the anchor chart under the flaps. 



While I am NOT planning to bombard 5th graders with water balloons before recess in freezing cold November, it is a way that I can make a concept stick with my 6th grade learners.  The more outrageous-the more memorable!  Happy Cyber Monday!