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Making Inferences – Part 2

Anchor Charts, Comprehension Connections, Debbie Miller, Reading, Reading with Meaning February 18, 2013

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…

 
 
Day #5 – The Mystery Box – idea from Inspired Apple’s Blog 

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.
 

 
 
 



Making Inferences – Part 1

Anchor Charts, Comprehension Connections, Reading February 17, 2013

This week we started teaching inferences in first grade.  We decided to start with concrete examples this week and then move into making inferences with text once they had the inferring skill down a little better.  For teaching inferences, I’ve gotten many ideas from Comprehension Connections by Tanny McGregor. She has wonderful ideas that are scaffolded to help support student learning.  I also got some great ideas from the blog, The Inspired Apple. Abby has some fun ideas for how to intitate inferring with students. 

On Day #1 – we started with The Inspired Apple’s – What is in my teacher’s bag?  The kids loved this! They thought it was so cool to be able to see things that were in my purse. I carefully selected my keys, wallet, iPod, cell phone, gum, and water bottle.  The first day we talked about each item and came up with reasons why it might be in my purse. We then charted those reasons. On Day #2, the kids filled out Abby’s cute page for What’s in my teacher’s bag? 

Our Chart
 
Thank you Abby for these great student sheets!
 
 
 
On Day #3 – I used the idea from Tanny’s book, Comprehension Connections called “Neighbor’s Trash.” You start off by explaining to your kiddos that you have a mystery that you need help figuring out. The mystery is that you have no idea who your next door neighbors are. You’ve never seen them, never met them, never heard them, etc, but you know someone lives there.  So, one morning you saw their trash outside and decided to take it to investigate. At this point, my kids thought I were crazy. Why would Miss V take her neighbor’s trash? Some of my kids suggested, why don’t you just knock on their day and be friendly lol.  Little do they realize this is all trash from my house. Like the teacher bag activity, you show them the items you found and they come up with inferences for who might live there based on the trash.  In my “neighbor’s” trash, we found a large pizza box, Ace bandage, empty Capri Sun pouch, Gap bag, receipt for a new TV, and a plane ticket.  See the chart we came up with below.
 
 
We also came up with an inference chart for ways to talk about inferences – my kids have gotten really good about starting their inference using the phrases below…
 
More inference ideas coming soon!
 

 
 

Setting – Literary Elements Activities

Literary Elements, Reading October 31, 2012

After spending two great weeks learning about characters as a part of our literary elements study in first grade, we moved on to learning about setting.  Setting is a tough one for first graders and it always has been for some reason.  The main part we focused on for these two weeks was where the story took place. We did discuss the time and the “when it took place” part of setting, but that discussion took place whole group.

Below are some awesome stories we used to focus on setting:

  • Library Mouse
  • Shark in the Dark
  • Swimmy
  • Chewy Louie
  • Zinnia and Dot
  • Corduroy
  • Owl Moon (used for their assessment)
  • The Gingerbread Cowboy (used for their assessment)
Setting Activities:
  • The easiest setting activity we did only takes a white piece of paper. We had students write the title of the story, name the setting, and then draw a picture of the setting.
  • Then, after a training on staff development day, I realized the Brace Map (thinking maps) would be a great way to identify what details led to the identification of the setting.

  • For practice and for our two Friday assessments, we used the setting page seen below…
 
Here are a few kid examples for the story – The Gingerbread Cowboy.  My favorite part about this assessment is kids not only have to identify the setting, but they also have to provide evidence from the book that led to them picking that setting (the upping of the rigor in Common Core :-))
 
The setting is desert.  I know this because in the book there is sand in the desert and cactus.
 
The setting is the desert. I know this because in the book there was cactus and a coyote and the wild pigs.
 
 
Below is the rubric we used to grade the setting portion and reading response.
 

Got 5 minutes….

Reading, Thinking Maps October 31, 2012

So you know that time in your day where you have about 5 minutes until it’s time to go to recess or about 5 minutes until you need to move onto the next activity, but it’s too soon to really get started on something else.  Well, here’s an activity I often use as a filler in my room.  It’s quick and also still educational! Each week we learn a new sound/spelling in first grade with our reading program.  Since our school is Thinking Maps trained one of the activities I throw in as that quick five minute filler is making a circle map with our sound/spelling of the week. It’s a quick activity, allows for each child to participate and be engaged, and gives kids an opportunity to review and practice our reading sound of the week.