Anticipation Guide¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 2 claims (2 for) · 5 studies (3 causal, 1 quant-synthesis, 1 review), q2–q3 · 1 of 5 report an effect size

Description¶

An anticipation guide is a short set of 3–8 statements — often deliberately ambiguous or aligned with common misconceptions — that learners mark agree/disagree before encountering new material. After instruction, learners revisit their initial responses, compare them with what they now know, and discuss discrepancies. The strategy activates prior knowledge and creates purpose for reading or listening.

Design Implications¶

Anticipation guides work by surfacing existing schemas and then challenging them: statements that learners confidently endorse but that the text contradicts produce the cognitive conflict that drives conceptual change Activating prior knowledge improves comprehension of new material. [+M]. The pre-post structure also converts reading from passive reception into confirmation-seeking, a form of Active Learning [+M]. The discussion of revised answers is where much of the learning happens; guides used as silent worksheets lose most of their value.

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Statements that are arguable — not directly answerable from surface features of the text — and that target the key concepts or common misconceptions of the topic
• A structured revisit-and-revise step after learning, ideally with Class Discussion of why answers changed
• Low-stakes framing so learners commit to honest initial answers rather than guessing at the "right" one
• 5–10 statements that are debatable, tied to the key ideas of the text or lesson (not trivia), and — ideally — include common misconceptions stated plausibly
• A mechanism for committing to answers (written, clicker, poll) so initial positions are recorded and revisable

Constraints¶

• Statements that are trivially true or false from the text alone produce no cognitive conflict and no activation [~M]
• If learners never revisit their answers, the guide functions as a weak advance organizer only; the conceptual-change benefit depends on the post-activity [~S]
• Overly long guides (10+ statements) dilute attention and add reading load before the actual content [-W]
• Less effective when learners lack enough prior knowledge to have any stance; bare guessing produces activation of nothing [+M context: requires some relevant schema]
• Statements that can be answered from surface features or guessed correctly without understanding produce no disequilibrium and little benefit [~M]
• If the post-instruction revisit is skipped, the guide degenerates into a generic warm-up with no conceptual-change mechanism [-M]
• Learners with strong accurate prior knowledge gain little; activation of what they already know is redundant [~M]
• Poorly worded ambiguous statements can install the misconception in learners who would not otherwise have held it [~W]

Implementation Variability¶

• Pre-only (activation), pre-post (conceptual change), or iterative (revisit at multiple points in a long text)
• Digital versions (polling tools like Poll Everywhere or Mentimeter) allow whole-class response aggregation, making misconceptions visible to the instructor before instruction begins
• Variants for video, lecture, or lab activities, not only text
• Pre/post only — silent individual completion, minimal discussion; fastest format
• Discussion-based — initial responses debated in pairs or whole class before instruction, surfacing disagreements that the text then resolves
• Digital/polling — tools like Pear Deck or clickers aggregate responses anonymously, making the class's misconception profile visible to the instructor in real time
• Extended guides — learners add a "evidence from the text" column, converting the guide into an Annotating scaffold during reading

Target Learners¶

• Readers with some prior knowledge of the topic, including misconceptions to surface Activating prior knowledge improves comprehension of new material. [+M]
• Reluctant or struggling readers, who gain a concrete purpose and personal stake in the text
• Less useful for complete novices with no relevant schema to activate
• Reluctant readers, who gain a personal stake and a purpose for reading [~M]
• Less valuable for learners with strong, accurate prior knowledge, for whom activation is redundant [~M]

Target Learning Goals¶

• Conceptual change: replacing misconceptions with accurate models Errors held with confidence, once corrected, improve retention. [+M]
• Reading comprehension: setting a purpose and monitoring for confirmation or disconfirmation
• Metacognition: noticing and evaluating one's own prior beliefs
• Conceptual change: replacing intuitive but incorrect models with disciplinary ones
• Reading comprehension: setting a purpose and monitoring for confirmation or refutation
• Metacognition: noticing and evaluating one's own beliefs against evidence

Instructions¶

1. Identify 3–8 key concepts or common misconceptions in the upcoming material and write arguable statements about them.
2. Have learners mark agree/disagree individually before exposure to the content (Activation).
3. Optionally poll the class to make the distribution of beliefs visible.
4. Learners engage with the content (reading, lecture, video), watching for evidence relevant to each statement.
5. Revisit the guide: learners revise answers and cite evidence for changes.
6. Discuss discrepancies in pairs or whole class, focusing on why initial beliefs were wrong (Cognitive Conflict).

Related Strategies¶

• Activating Prior Knowledge — the broader family; the anticipation guide is a structured, misconception-targeted instance
• KWL — a related pre-during-post routine with open-ended rather than agree/disagree prompts
• Prequestions — question-based activation with similar pre-testing effects
• KWL Chart — a related pre/during/post scaffold with open-ended prompts instead of agree/disagree statements
• Erroneous Examples — the worked-example analogue: presenting flawed material for learners to diagnose

Examples¶

• A middle-school science teacher uses statements like "Heavier objects fall faster" before a gravity unit; students overwhelmingly agree, then confront Galileo's reasoning in the text and must reconcile their revision.
• ReadWriteThink (IRA/NCTM) publishes anticipation-guide lesson plans across ELA texts.
• A university statistics course opens each module with an online agree/disagree poll on intuitive-but-wrong claims (e.g., "A sample of 1,000 is always better than one of 100"), displaying the class distribution before the lecture.
• Science misconceptions: Before a unit on photosynthesis, students respond to "Plants get most of their mass from soil" — the classic misconception documented by Driver et al.; post-instruction revisiting forces confrontation with the mass-from-carbon-dioxide account.
• Reading Rockets — published templates and guidance for using anticipation guides in K–12 literacy instruction.
• History: Before a unit on the causes of WWI, students agree/disagree with "One assassination caused the war," then revisit after examining primary sources.

Key Sources¶

• Duffelmeyer, F. A. (1994). Effective anticipation guide statements for learning from expository text. Journal of Reading, 37(7), 552–557.
• Head, M. H., & Readence, J. E. (1986). Anticipation guides: Meaning through prediction. In E. K. Dishner et al. (Eds.), Reading in the content areas (pp. 227–233). Kendall/Hunt.
• Karpicke, J. D., & Blunt, J. R. (2011). Retrieval practice produces more learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. Science, 331(6018), 772–775. doi:10.1126/science.1199327
• Vosniadou, S. (2013). Conceptual change in learning and instruction. In International Handbook of Research on Conceptual Change. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203154472.ch1
• Pressley, M., et al. (1992). Encouraging mindful use of prior knowledge: Attempting to construct explanatory answers facilitates learning. Educational Psychologist, 27(1), 91–109. doi:10.1207/s15326985ep2701_7
• Duffelmeyer, F. A., Baum, D. D., & Merkley, N. J. (1987). Maximizing reader-anticipated conflict: An intervention. Journal of Reading Behavior, 19(2), 157–170.
• Head, M. H., & Readence, J. E. (1986). Anticipation guides: Meaning through prediction. In E. K. Dishner et al. (Eds.), Reading in the content areas (pp. 226–231). Kendall/Hunt.
• Dole, J. A., Duffy, G. G., Roehler, L. R., & Pearson, P. D. (1991). Moving from the old to the new: Research on reading comprehension instruction. Review of Educational Research, 61(2), 239–264. doi:10.3102/00346543061002239