Cataphoric reference means that a word in a text refers to another later in the text and you need to look forward to understand. It can be compared with anaphoric reference, which means a word refers back to another word for its meaning.

Example
When he arrived, John noticed that the door was open'.

In the classroom
Matching parts of sentences can help learners understand how cataphoric reference works, for example:
a) As she entered the building                     1) Jim fell over
b) When he was running upstairs                 2) the woman saw a huge crowd