What strategy involves students looking at pictures before reading a story to predict its content?

The strategy that involves students looking at pictures before reading a story to predict its content is known as a picture walk. This approach encourages students to engage with the illustrations, stimulating their imagination and prompting them to make predictions about the story's themes, characters, and events based solely on visual clues. By examining the pictures, students activate their prior knowledge and make connections, which enhances comprehension and sets a purpose for reading the text that follows. This anticipatory activity can make the reading experience more meaningful and enjoyable, as students form expectations and hypotheses around the narrative based on their observations.

In contrast, a cloze exercise focuses on filling in blanks within a text, which targets different reading skills. A think-aloud strategy involves verbalizing thoughts during reading to model comprehension strategies. A story map is a graphic organizer that outlines elements of the story, such as characters, settings, and plot, but it is typically used after reading to help summarize and analyze the story rather than before reading to predict content.