Don’t open the book. Open the question.

One small shift in how you open a reading lesson — the ESL reading prediction strategy called Preview & Predict — can change what happens in your online class before a single word is read.

Most reading lessons fall flat in the first thirty seconds — not because the text is wrong, but because we hand it over before students have any reason to care.

The fix is smaller than you think. Before you open the book at all, you pause. You ask one good question. You wait. And then something different happens.

This post explains why that pause matters — and gives you the exact words to use with your online students.

The problem with handing over the text

When we give students a reading before they have any investment in it, we’re asking them to receive information without motivation. The brain doesn’t work that way. Reading is fundamentally a prediction process — it wants to guess, confirm, and revise.

If we skip the prediction step, students read because the teacher said to. The words go in, and not much happens — especially in an online lesson where it’s easy to look engaged while mentally elsewhere.

The moment you ask a question before the reading begins, that changes. Now they have a stake. Now they’re reading to find out if they were right.

How to use the Preview & Predict technique online

In a physical classroom, you hold up the book cover. Online, the equivalent is screen-sharing a single image — just the cover, or a key illustration — before you share anything with text on it.

The move is simple: share the image, ask one question, wait. That waiting moment — ten seconds of silence while students look — is where the curiosity builds. Resist the urge to fill it.

Then ask students to type their prediction in the chat before anyone speaks. This is one of the best adaptations for Zoom or VooV: the chat box gives every student a chance to commit to a guess simultaneously, rather than the first confident student shutting down everyone else’s thinking.

The script — copy and paste this into your lesson plan

These are the literal words to say (or type in the chat) in sequence:

How to run it — step by step

1. 1 Screen-share just the cover image — don’t reveal the title yet.
2. 2 Give 10 seconds of quiet looking. Mute yourself. Resist filling the silence.
3. 3 Ask students to type predictions in the chat simultaneously — read a few aloud.
4. 4 Read the first page together. Circle back: Who was closest?

The framing shift that makes it work

The technique only works if students believe their wrong answer won’t be corrected. Most students — especially adult online learners who’ve sat through years of formal education — have learned that wrong = bad. So before they’ll guess, they need to hear a different rule from you.

It comes down to one small word change in how you ask:

One asks for performance. The other asks for participation. Same lesson, very different response — especially from students who are camera-off and already feeling anonymous.

When students know wrong is safe, they stop waiting for someone else to answer first. The chat fills up. And that curiosity — the willingness to guess — is what carries them through the reading.

Adapting the prediction strategy for different CEFR levels

The technique works from A1 through B2, but the questions look different at each level.

At A1–A2, keep predictions visual and simple. Ask: “Is this happy or sad? Is it outside or inside? How many people?” Students answer with single words or short phrases — and they can. That early success matters.

At B1, you can add inference: “What relationship do you think these people have? What do you think just happened before this moment?”

At B2, predictions can be more analytical: “The title is ‘The Last Letter.’ What do you think the tone of this story will be? Hopeful? Sad? Tense?” This primes higher-level engagement with the text’s emotional register.

The principle is the same across all levels. The question just has to be answerable — so every student can commit to something before the reading begins.