Hi Andrea,
Thanks for asking about making predictions. I have done this on a "macro" and on a "micro" level. Here are a few examples of what I mean....

On the "macro" level, I can help students bring their life experience and  background knowledge to reading, and to focus on comprehension. 

If we were going to start reading a book, I could read the title of the book and ask students to look at the picture on the cover. Then I would ask them what they think the book was going to be about. I would stress that there is no "right answer." We don't know what the book is about for sure until we read it. Then I could ask them to open the book to page 1 and read them the first sentence. I could read it to them, ask them to read it again with me, then ask individuals to read it alone. Then we could re-calibrate our predictions based on that sentence. I might write the predictions on the board and use them as reading material--it's a kind of "language experience." 

I have found strategies such as this to be hugely helpful in the following ways:
--students get interested in the reading material. They want to find out what happens.
--students shift from "decoding for its own sake" to "decoding in order to comprehend."
--students begin to connect background knowledge to decoding. If the book is about a woman who gets into debt using credit cards, they may be able to predict that the word after "credit" is "card." The prediction supports and checks the decoding. It's a back-and-forth. One cannot work without the other. Students don't ONLY predict/guess what the next word will be. They decode as well, but use prediction to inform their decoding and context to check and see if their decoding makes sense. 

On the "micro" (decoding) level, I might do something like this...

I write a sentence like this on the board:

"This morning for breakfast, I ate some buttered t_____."

Ask students to predict what the word will be. They will probably get it right. (I know, I know. Not everyone eats "toast" for breakfast.)

Then I write this sentence: 

"I also drank a cup of ______"

Students make their guesses about what the word will be. Some might say "coffee" and some might say "tea." Or something else. Then add a letter to the sentence so it's this:

"I also drank a cup of t___"

Ask them to guess again. Phonics and context (aka common sense, critical thinking) are happily wed. Hooray. 

I hope that makes sense and I hope it's helpful. 

from 

Bruce Carmel
Turning Point
Brooklyn NY