We spent a total of three weeks of making inferences so that the kids really had an opportunity to master the skill. The first blog post part 1, shows some of the introduction ideas we used. As I mentioned in that post, we started by teaching concrete examples and later moved to making inferences about text.
Day #4 – From Tanny McGregor’s, Comprehension Connections – Shoe Inference Lesson
For this lesson, you bring in a shoe and the kids have to infer who’s shoe they think it is and why. Now, I live by myself so I knew if I brought in one of my shoes they’d easily guess it, so I asked my dad if I could borrow one of his sandals. The kids had so much fun trying to come up with ideas of the owner of the sandal and using the evidence from the sandal and their schema. See chart below…
For this lesson, I pretty much followed Abby’s example on her blog and even used the valentine as my mystery item (the timing worked out well with Valentine’s Day a week or two away). We made guesses about what was in the box, then I gave the kids clues, and they filled out the mystery box sheet that Abby has in her TPT store. Great lesson and the kids had fun trying to guess the mystery item.
Day #6 – Making inferences with pictures
Today we used pictures as our evidence for our inferences. I found this great pinboard on Pinterest that has a ton of pictures that are perfect for making inferences. I put some of the photos into a Smart Board file and I was all ready to go for this lesson. For the first few slides, we made group inferences. We talked about what some of the different clues or evidence in the picture were that led to our inference. Then, after multiple group inferences, I showed them two more pictures. The kiddos had to pick one picture to make an inference about. Then, I showed them their inference paper to fill out. They needed to write their inference using one of the inference phrases (see chart below) and then also explain how they go their inference. Most students sentence frame looked like this…”I infer _______ because ______. The kids did a great job with this activity!
Day #7 – Inferences with Short Pixar Videos
Our school literacy coach told me about this great idea – using Pixar short films for inferencing. I found a number of them on Youtube and chose the bird one that if I remember correctly was in one of the Toy Story movies. The kids thought it was so funny and we watched the video a few times. The last time we watched it (it’s only like 3 minutes long) I stopped it a few times and asked some questions to get the kids thinking about inferences they could make. Then, I gave them the same inference form they used with the pictures and they had to write down one of the inferences they made from the video.
This student wrote “I infer the big bird wanted to be their friends because he waved at them.”
Day #8 – Mystery Box again
The kids had so much fun with the mystery box that I decided to do it again. This time I put green sprinkles in the box and used the following clues:
1. It is green.
2. It can be eaten.
3. It is small.
4. It goes on dessert.
See our chart below of our guesses before and after the clues.
Day # 9 – Making Inferences with a Poem
Day 9’s lesson came from Debbie Miller’s, Reading with Meaning chapter on making inferences. I wanted the kids to start exploring inferences with text and thought a poem would be a great way to start. I used the poem from her book, which is about an animal, but the kids don’t know what animal it is. They have to infer from the clues in the poem what possible animals it could be. The kids love animals and this was a great way for them to start inferring with text since poems are a little shorter.
Day #10 and 11 – Where Are You Going, Manyoni?
For day 10 and 11, I again used Debbie Miller’s, Reading with Meaning. We read the story, Where Are You Going, Manyoni? and inferred what some of the different words meant. See our chart below…
Days #12 and 13 – The Royal Bee
Day 12 and 13’s lessons are also from Debbie Miller’s, Reading with Meaning. On the first day, we read a few pages of the story, The Royal Bee and inferred what a few of the vocabulary words meant – yangmin, Royal Bee, etc. Then, we stopped at the part where the kids had to infer what would happen next for the main character Song-ho. I charted their inferences on the first day. Then, on day 2, they got to see if their inferences were correct. Then, I read to the part where it came down to the winner of the Royal Bee and the kids had to predict/infer whether Song-ho or the yangmin student would win. The kids had great answers and great evidence. See a few examples below…
I predict Song-ho will win the Royal Bee because Song-ho is smart and his whole class picked him to go to the Royal Bee.
I predict Song-ho will win the Royal Bee because he stand at the door and listened to the master’s lessons.
That about covers it for our 3 weeks of making inferences. This was probably one of my favorite units to teach this year.
