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Predicting Outcome | K-1
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critical reading requires skill and strategy. In order to retain the information you
read, it is important to engage with the text. If you read passively, the ideas about which you are reading
will soon be forgotten.
One way to engage actively with a text is to play detective and try to predict where the story is headed. You
can do this before you open the cover of the book. A book’s synopsis usually appears on the back cover
or on the inside flap of the front cover. What does the synopsis tell you about the story between the covers? A book’s title also may offer some clues. It is unlikely that The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William
Shakespeare is going to be a happy story. Bear in mind, though, that some titles may be misleading. For
example, The Human Comedy by William Saroyan is not a funny book. Nonetheless, a book’s synopsis and
title often provide clues when predicting the outcome of the story.
As you begin to read the text itself, pay close attention to the author’s words, as well as the details he or
she chooses to describe, emphasize, and leave out. These clues will also indicate how the story is likely to
unfold.
Read the following excerpt from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Pay attention to the details in the
text.
“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
“It’s so dreadful to be poor!” sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress.
“I don’t think it’s fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at
all,” added little Amy, with an injured sniff.
“We’ve got Father and Mother, and each other,” said Beth contentedly from her corner.
The four young faces on which the firelight shone brightened at the cheerful words, but
darkened again as Jo said sadly, “We haven’t got Father, and shall not have him for a
long time.” She didn’t say “perhaps never,” but each silently added it, thinking of Father far
away, where the fighting was.
What can you predict from the clues in story’s title and first few lines? Four girls speak in these opening
lines, and they seem to have a mother and father in common. So you know the story begins with four sisters. The conversation reveals the time of year (it is clearly shortly before Christmas), the fact that the family
is poor, and that their father is away at war. The book is entitled Little Women. From these facts, you can
predict that the story is likely to revolve around these four girls as they mature into women.
Some titles are good indicators of the story to follow. However, some are allusions to famous works of literature or other sources with which the author thinks a reader will be familiar. In those cases, it is up to the
reader to try to figure out how the title relates to the text.
As you read, you should periodically stop to consider whether the story is unfolding the way you thought it
would, or whether something has changed. This will help you to predict where the story is going and how it
will end. This practice also will keep you engaged as you read.
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Predicting Outcomes
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The following are excerpts from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. If you are not familiar with the
story, the time in which it takes place, or the customs of Colonial America, the title may not give you any
clues. Read the excerpts, answer the questions that follow, and see what predictions you can make.
A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and grey steeple-crowned hats, inter-mixed with
women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice,
the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.
The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally
project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of
the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. In accordance with this
rule it may safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house somewhere in the Vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground,
on Isaac Johnson’s lot, and round about his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all
the congregated sepulchers in the old churchyard of King’s Chapel. Certain it is that, some fifteen
or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weatherstains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy
front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything
else in the New World. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era.
Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much
overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-pern, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently
found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a
prison. But on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance
and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth
to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.
1. What three things are being described in the second paragraph?
a. a church
b. a cemetery
c. a prison
d. a tavern
e. a rose bush
2. Before which of these are the people in the first paragraph congregating?
a. a church
b. a cemetery
c. a prison
d. a tavern
e. a rose bush
3. Which two of the following predictions for the story are justified by the above observations?
a. The people in the story go to church regularly.
b. The prison will play an ominous role in the story that follows.
c. The conflict between nature and society will play a role in this story.
d. There will be a great deal of death in this story.
As the story continues, Hester Prynne is led out of the prison with a red letter “A” on the front of her dress
and a baby in her arms. Her husband had sent her ahead to the colonies two years prior and had never
arrived himself. The existence of the child convicted Hester of adultery, and imprisonment and wearing the
“badge of shame,” the scarlet letter, were her punishment. She has consistently refused to name the man
Continued
Copyright © 2013 Taylor Associates/Communications,
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Predicting Outcome | K-1
COMPREHENSION SKILLS PRACTICE
Predicting Outcomes
Level K-1
Student Name________________________________________________________
who fathered the child. On this day she is made to stand upon a pedestal before everyone in town for her
shame and to once again be lectured and interviewed regarding the identity of the father of her daughter,
Pearl.
When she is returned to her prison cell, she is distraught and so the men in charge send for a doctor who
has just arrived in town. His name is Roger Chillingworth. When he and Hester are left alone, we discover
that he is, in reality, her lost husband. He is older than she and physically deformed. During their conversation, we learn that she never claimed to love him and that he was more interested in his books than in his
wife when they lived together. The following excerpts are part of their exchange.
“I have greatly wronged thee,” murmured Hester.
“We have wronged each other,” answered he. “Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay. Therefore, as a man who has not
thought and philosophized in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee. Between thee
and me, the scale hangs fairly balanced. But, Hester, the man lives who has wronged us both!
Who is he?”
“Ask me not!” replied Hester Prynne, looking firmly into his face. “That thou shalt never know!”
“Never, sayest thou?” rejoined he, with a smile of dark and self-relying intelligence. “Never know
him! Believe me, Hester, there are few things whether in the outward world, or, to a certain depth,
in the invisible sphere of thought—few things hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly
and unreservedly to the solution of a mystery. Thou mayest cover up thy secret from the prying
multitude. Thou mayest conceal it, too, from the ministers and magistrates, even as thou didst this
day, when they sought to wrench the name out of thy heart, and give thee a partner on thy pedestal.
But, as for me, I come to the inquest with other senses than they possess. I shall seek this man, as
I have sought truth in books: as I have sought gold in alchemy. There is a sympathy that will make
me conscious of him. I shall see him tremble. I shall feel myself shudder, suddenly and unawares.
Sooner or later, he must needs be mine.”
The eyes of the wrinkled scholar glowed so intensely upon her, that Hester Prynne clasped her
hand over her heart, dreading lest he should read the secret there at once.
4. How does Chillingworth say he feels about Hester? (choose two)
a. He forgives her.
b. He hates her.
c. They are even in the way they have wronged each other.
d. He does not say.
5. What is Hester’s reaction to Chillingworth’s words?
a. She is happy.
b. She is angry
c. She is afraid.
d. She is unconcerned.
6. What does Chillingworth state he is going to do that no one else had been able to do?
a. Discover the identity of Pearl’s father.
b. Solve the mystery of why Hester is protecting Pearl’s father.
c. Use alchemy to make gold from baser metals.
d. Perform open heart surgery.
Continued
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Inc.
ReadingPlus
Interaction
Taylor Associatesof Ideas
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Predicting Outcome | K-1
COMPREHENSION SKILLS PRACTICE
Predicting Outcomes
Level K-1
Student Name________________________________________________________
7. What can you predict is going to happen in the story based on this scene?
a. Hester and Chillingworth will reconcile and raise Pearl together.
b. Chillingworth is going to renounce Hester and return to England.
c. Hester is going to run away with Pearl.
d. Chillingworth is going to try to exact revenge against Pearl’s father.
As the years passed, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale’s health began to fail. He was the minister and spiritual
leader for Hester and for the town. It was arranged that Chillingworth, as a physician, should move into an
apartment in the same house where the minister lived. Some in town thought this a marvelous idea as it
would allow the physician to monitor the minister’s health more closely. Others had begun to fear and distrust Chillingworth for no reason they could name and feared for the minister’s soul. The following excerpt
describes Chillingworth after he has moved in to his new apartment.
Old Roger Chillingworth, throughout life, had been calm in temperament, kindly, though not of warm
affections, but ever, and in all his relations with the world, a pure and upright man. He had begun
an investigation, as he imagined, with the severe and equal integrity of a judge, desirous only of
truth, even as if the question involved no more than the air-drawn lines and figures of a geometrical
problem, instead of human passions, and wrongs inflicted on himself. But, as he proceeded, a
terrible fascination, a kind of fierce, though still calm, necessity, seized the old man within its gripe,
and never set him free again until he had done all its bidding. He now dug into the poor clergyman’s
heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest
of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man’s bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality
and corruption. Alas, for his own soul, if these were what he sought!
Sometimes a light glimmered out of the physician’s eyes, burning blue and ominous, like the reflection of a furnace, or, let us say, like one of those gleams of ghastly fire that darted from Bunyan’s
awful doorway in the hillside, and quivered on the pilgrim’s face. The soil where this dark miner was
working had perchance shown indications that encouraged him.
8. To what investigation is the author probably referring?
a. Chillingworth’s desire to make gold.
b. Chillingworth’s desire to solve an obscure geometry problem.
c. Chillingworth’s search for Pearl’s father.
d. Chillingworth’s search for jewelry.
9. What change has come over Chillingworth?
a. He has grown old.
b. He has become distant from human emotions.
c. His insides have started to burn blue.
d. He has become obsessed with the search he began as a simple investigation.
10. What predictions can you make from the hints given so far in the text?
a. Chillingworth is going to continue his search to the exclusion of all else.
b. Dimmesdale will be revealed as Pearl’s father.
c. Chillingworth is going to become evil.
d. all of the above
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Inc.