What's That There in Your Crystal Ball?
Using Journals to Make Predictions

Katie Wood
University of South Carolina

As a teacher, I suppose it was only natural that much of my curriculum emerged from my own desire for my students to look into their own "crystal balls" and evaluate what they saw there. I wanted them to understand that much of their future was within their control; that by analyzing the past and the present, they could make reliable predictions about what lies ahead. and like many in education, I talked a good game when it came to "future skills" like informed decision making and higher order thinking. I was giving them the tools they needed for the future, but these tools were cumbersome and laborious until we made the electric connection with literature. From that moment on, we had power tools!

Like many great inventions, I happened upon this energy source quite by accident. As a language arts teacher, I was well informed of the power of writing-to-learn. Room 114 was always stocked with the obligatory journals, filled with students' reflections about stories, events, and life in general. But it wasn't until we began using the journals to predict, as well as reflect, that I realized how powerful a tool writing-to-learn could be.

The first time we did written predictions, I began by sharing with my students my feelings about being able to see the future. As seventh graders are apt to do, they had many stories to tell of their own fascinations with the "supernatural." We approached our look into the future with enthusiasm. They liked the idea because they knew they couldn't give a wrong answer.

When we found ourselves at a critical point in a class novel, I had the students predict what they thought was going to happen. It was a great way to grasp hold of some principles of literary analysis like setting, characterization, plot and theme. The requirement was that every prediction must have a valid line of reasoning behind it based on story elements we'd already encountered in the book. The students made the decision not to share their predictions until after we had finished the novel. The ensuing discussion that wait made possible was at the very least serendipitous. We spent two days analyzing our predictions in light of what happened in the story. Similarities were noted, ideas challenged and defended, and at times the authority of the author and his text were even brought into question! The promise of the activity was exciting, but I still had not made the crucial connection.

I thought about what took place on those three days in October, and I realized that the discussion my class and I had was a verbal type of reflection. How much more powerful, I thought, would the whole process be if I had students do written reflections on their individual predictions. The result was a prediction/ reflection journal that became the staple of our reading and writing curriculum.

Within weeks, I could see marked improvement in my students' abilities to analyze settings, characters, and plots in their quest for the perfect prediction. In the brighter students' journals, I saw an attempt to understand emerging themes and character motives as a way of coming to conclusions. The task became a very serious one. "Cheating"--changing a prediction to fit an outcome--was the ultimate transgression, and I had many keepers of the faith who would inform me of any wrongdoing!

The prediction/reflection process was at full scale in March when we read Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. The story of young Cassie, a black child in rural Mississippi in the 30's, is one with which middle school students experience great empathy. Cassie and her brothers and sisters are wonderfully drawn characters, and the difficulties they meet through the plot draw the reader into a tight web of mixed emotions. The setting becomes absolutely crucial to the story. As we approached the decisive Chapter 11, I sensed the anxiety of my students as I asked them to predict what would happen. They didn't want to face the reality of what they knew their predictions must show. Desperately they sought ways to make everyone live happily ever after, but the ugly hate of prejudice stared back at them from the pages we had read. On this day, we worked in silence.

It was through the experience with this novel that I came to understand that the literary skills we had worked so hard to refine would translate easily to the settings, characters, and plots of our real everyday lives. If I truly was interested in making my students "future thinkers," why did I need to limit them to the fictional world of books? I wondered if my students could learn to predict their own futures with as much accuracy as they had the fictional characters we'd encountered. It was certainly worth a try.

I proposed the idea to my students, and they were excited about the possibility. Together we worked to establish and then refine the process of predicting events in our own lives. We started with something we all had in common, an upcoming nine- weeks test. At the end of a review session the day before the test, students wrote their predictions of how they would do. To apply the valid line of reasoning rule, they analyzed their efforts during the previous quarter, made judgments about the difficulty of the material to be covered, and evaluated their own test-taking abilities. During the process, the students made a startling discovery. There was one variable they had complete control over that would affect the outcome of the test: the amount of study they would do that night! In an effort to outdo each other, they made commitments of four, five, and even ten hours of study to earn the A+ they wanted to predict. Needless to say, we went to the test with high expectations. But more importantly, we came out with the best test performances of the year! I'm sure I did nothing short of glow when I returned that set of papers.

Our reflections on the testing predictions helped us to begin to realize the power we had created by using this process in our own lives. Almost unanimously, students came to the conclusion that they studied harder to ensure the test outcome would match their prediction. It took a little nudging on my part to make them see how this could be used effectively in many areas of their lives. The issue was to get them to understand that we have tremendous control over many variables in our lives. It isn't a responsibility we always want to take. It's much easier to beg off with excuses about how circumstances were "out of our hands," especially if our hands are thirteen years old. The power, however, remains.

Think about the degree of certainty with which you can predict what you will do or what will happen to you tomorrow. It's a very practical kind of ESP that we all possess. We can see the future, and we do it all the time. Making plans is the perfect example: If you and I schedule a meeting tomorrow for two o'clock, the chances are remarkably high that we will indeed meet at the appointed hour. As a good future teller, I will do everything I can to see that my "prediction" of meeting you comes true. I can manipulate the "setting" so I am available at that time. I can ask another "character" in the story, my secretary maybe, to remind me of our date, and I can pen the "plot" in my appointment book to ensure the outcome is a happy ending. My students and I learned that we were the authors of our own life stories, and we had to do all we could to write best-sellers.

Studying full time over the last few months, I have often thought about ways to expand the prediction/reflection journal for use in other content areas. Many schools already have writing-across-the-curriculum working for their students. All that is needed is for teachers to realize, as my students and I did, the power of prediction, and then be willing to stop long enough to let students think about the future.

Any teacher could allow students the opportunity to predict performance on tests and other class activities. Many science experiments could be stopped long enough for students to piece together a probable outcome. Mathematics students learning a new method might predict following steps or final answers. Athletes and musicians might predict their own performances, or artists their next great work. and perhaps most powerfully, students of history might read or watch the news and predict outcomes for world events as they happen.

I am confident that any teacher could find at least two opportunities a week to let her students predict the future and later reflect on those predictions. How easy it would be to implement such a program in an entire system! No special skills or specific content area knowledge is needed. No district guidelines would have to be drawn. The only requirement is that teachers believe in the power of the process of prediction and reflection and have a simple dedication to making students better able to control their own destinies.

I have found much inspiration for my ideas while reading some of the educational classics--Alvin Toffler's Learning for Tomorrow (1974) and Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner's Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969). Toffler says that "all education springs from some image of the future." From schooling's earliest roots this idea has been true. Educational philosophers have always given us rather precise visions of the kinds of men and women schools should make of little boys and girls. Ancient Greeks wanted intellectual decision makers and enlightened future leaders, while their Roman counterparts were more interested in making men into soldiers. Scholastics like Thomas Aquinas wanted to produce moral thinkers who easily combined faith with reason. and in our own educational story are written such characters as Benjamin Rush who saw schooling as a way to make men into "Republican machines." Now, as this more mature nation heads toward the twenty-first century, philosophers and laymen alike struggle with a vision for our youth, with knowing what men and women of the future will need to succeed, or even just get by.

We are living in the first generation for which the assumption that the present and the future will be much the same as the past is false (Postman and Weingartner). The knowledge explosion of this century has made our world a place of rapid change. Even change has changed because of the sheer speed at which it now occurs (Postman and Weingartner). and yet in many ways our schools continue to operate with the tacit notion that tomorrow's world will be basically familiar--the present writ large (Toffler). As a result, we do the best we can to keep up, tread fearlessly where no teachers have gone before, and daily fall short of adequately preparing our students for the certain, uncertain future. There has never been a better time than now to turn our attention to equipping ourselves for whatever might lie ahead. The way I see it, we have two choices. We can peer into the vase filled with colored water and hope for the best, or we can begin to shift our curriculum focus to the future. The prediction/reflection journal was a wonderful place for my students and me to start.

Works Cited

Postman, Neil, and Charles Weingartner. Teaching as a Subversive Activity. New York: Delacorte, 1969.

Toffler, Alvin. Learning for Tomorrow: The Role of the Future in Education. New York: Vintage Books, 1974.