Making Inferences

This week, we started our “I Infer” unit.  I love, love, love teaching my kids how to make inferences.  It is truly the part of comprehension that takes a reader to the next level.  

We started with the poem “Things” by Eloise Greenfield.  It is a wonderful little poem that leaves students wondering: “What happened to the candy?”  “Where did the sandhouse go?”  The poem is also simple enough for them to use their prior knowledge of candy and the beach to figure this out – or infer – what happened! 🙂  We read the poem multiple times, discussed our prior knowledge and the clues Eloise gave us, to infer the little girl ate the candy, and the waves washed her sandhouse away.  (Although one little girl was persistent that she HAD to have lost the candy because WHO in their right mind would eat their candy before they got home?!) 
  

We used a few of her other poems this week and we will continue to use a couple of them next week.  The book this poem comes from is called Honey I Love.  Many of the poems in this book lend themselves to making inferences easily.
We’ve also been learning our new strategy song for the week.  I have no idea where I found my strategy songs a couple years ago, but I think I have a song for about every CAFE strategy there is for comprehension!  My kids love singing and we sing all. the.time. in my room! Singing  in the classroom was something I picked up from a wonderful mentor teacher during my first year out of college. It creates a constant happy environment and really promotes fluency and excitement for learning.  Here is our “inferring” song:
Today, we read Arthur’s Valentine.  We love Arthur!  In this book, Arthur receives all kinds of secret admirer notes and he can’t figure out who they are from.  I will be honest, this inference lesson came on a whim today.  Our guidance counselor was out sick and had to cancel my kiddos’ monthly guidance lesson. Not a problem, but I did find myself with extra time to fill!   
After reading the book, it lent itself perfectly to another lesson on making inferences.  I had my kids write “Secret Admirer” notes to ME.  They had to sign their letter “Your Secret Admirer” and they had to write clues about themselves.  I explained that they needed to think of things to write about that would make me use my own prior knowledge about them + clues they give me in their text to figure out who was writing the secret admirer letter.  
It was a hit! They had so much fun and it really helped them apply their new knowledge of inferring. Here are some examples from today:

Tomorrow, I will read their letters to the class and the kids will have to use their own prior knowledge and each author’s clues to figure out who the letters are from.  ðŸ™‚

Thanks for reading about our week so far!  I hope you are able to stop by my friend Danielle’s blog for Day 6 of the “For the Love of Teaching Freebie Blog Hop!”  She has an adorable freebie on long vowels that I know you’ll want to snatch up!  Click the button below to take you to her blog.  

You will also want to also stop back HERE on Saturday, Day 9.  I’m not telling you why…I’ll leave you to make your own inference. 😉

Have fun and happy learning,

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10 Comments

  1. Love using the poetry as the introduction to making inferences. I'm always looking for new ways to incorporate poetry into other reading strategies. 🙂 THANKS!

    Ciera
    adventuresofroom129.blogspot.com

  2. Hi Susan,

    Thanks for stopping by! :). The poem comes from Eloise Greenfield's book, so it is copyrighted to her. I won't be making a printable but I highly suggest purchasing the book. 🙂 It has many other great poems! 🙂

  3. Hi there!! Thank you soooo much for mentioning my Blog (Day 6) of the Blog Hop! I will be back tomorrow for Day 9!! Yay!! Can't wait to see what you've created! Have a good weekend!
    -Danielle-
    Crayonbox Learning

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