Making Predictions

March 19, 2011 by Lisa Freeman
Posted in•Social Thinking•Predicting/Making Smart Guesses

We don’t use crystal balls to make predictions. We look at the contextual cues and use our knowledge and memory of what has happened before

So as you cross the street and you see that the approaching car is veering toward the right you predict that the car is going to turn and you stop walking. In the morning, you look out the window and see that it looks very gray and cloudy so you take your umbrella because you figure that it might rain. These thoughts are so automatic that we may not notice that they occur. This isn’t the case for our students.

Our kids don’t take in the contextual information or use their memory and knowledge to make predictions about what might happen next. This affects their ability to understand literature and movies. It can also result in being vulnerable to being picked on because they don’t understand the motives and intentions of others and can’t predict what they might do. In class we work on using what we know about people to predict things about them. 

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