Fun ways to get them inferring

~ Clip adds from magazines and try to have the students infer what the add is saying.
~ Take a picture of something and clip something important out. Tell the students you clipped it out so long ago so you can't remember what it was.
The example she did was a picture of a soccer team tackeling a soccer ball. But she cut the soccer ball out.
~ Take a picture (out of a magazine) and lay a piece of construction paper over it with a hole cut out so the only thing exposed is the one part you want them to infer.
The example she gave us was a a boy in a jumping pose. You couldn't see much around the object so you had to use what the kid was wearing and doing to figure it out.

I stole my neighbor's recycling!

The first lesson my 3rd grader does for inferring is to...

Tell her students she has a problem. She has these new neighbors, but she hasn't met them yet. They must have moved in at night, because one day the house was for sale and the next thing she saw it was sold, but she never saw them moving. She keeps seeing their lights go on and off, but no one ever leaves the house... and it is driving her nuts so she stole their recycling this morning.

She then proceeds to pull out a recycling bag, and tells the kids she needs their help figuring out what kind of people they are.

The trash isn't actually stolen, it's hers and she puts travel brochuers and a plane ticket, gatorade bottles, protein bar wrappers, water bottles.

They then learn to make inferences.

Transition from visualize to inferring

~Use Creatures of the Earth, Sea, and Sky by Georgia Heard.
~Rewrite the words onto chart paper.
~ Fold or roll the paper up so only one line of the poem is exposed at a time.
~ Have the students try to guess what the animal is based on the evidence
~ Unroll the next line and ask them if the new information has changed their thinking?
~ Keep unrolling and discussing.

Thinking Stems

My third grade class just wrapped up their lesson on using thinking stems to be a more active reader.

They read the book How many Days to America? by Eve Bunting


Thinking Stems

I'm thinking.....
I'm wondering....
I'm seeing.....
I'm feeling......

Inferring for meaning with poetry

Creatures of the Earth, Sea, and Sky by Georgia Heard


Choose 6 poems that could lend themselves best to dramatic interpretation and copy them onto chart paper.
Together as a class read them several times.
"Think carefully about the poems we just read. Which one is the most interesting to you? Which one makes you think? Hmm.... what is the poem really about? Choose one you'd like to understand better"
"Once you've decided, go to the peom you want to learn more about. Take it with you and find a place in the room you can work well. You'll have about fifteen minutes to build on each other's ideas and figure out how your group can best interpret the peom you've chosen."
Figure 8.6 what the worksheet could look like

*Integrate Writing*
Children saw this activity as a way to construct riddles. They decided to write a poem together and send it home to see if their parents could figure out what they were describing.

*Integrate into the community*
Have each child write a riddle. Post it in the hallway allowing other students to try and infer what the poems are about.  After a week or so, children wrote their titles of the poems.




Reading With Meaning chapter 8

Who, What, When, Where

Benefits
- Engaging
- Students are up and moving
- Students get to talk
- Quick
- Easy to adapt for grade level (use pictures)

Teaching points
- Predicting
- Sequencing
- Story Elements
- Prior Knowledge
- Inferncing

Teacher Prep
- Pick a picture book you want to share with the students
- Choose 10 quotes from the text that would help give hints to character development, setting, time period, or the plot. You want the hints to give enough so the students are curious and engaged, but you don't want it to be so hard they are stumped. 
- Write or type the 1 quote per index card
- Give each student 1 index card.
- Students get up and share their quote with 3 other people and try to predict what the story would be about.
- The students go back to their table/spot and share aloud with the class what they think the story is about and what makes them think that.