A little more on Inferencing

I posted earlier about my introduction for inferencing with my friendly dog, Scout.  This is what we've been up to since then!

Inferring the meaning of a word:
Thanks to one of my 2nd grade teammates, I used the book The Wretched Stone written by Chris Van Allsburg to discuss how to infer the meaning of a word.  We discussed what we thought the word "wretched" meant, and used orange to write down our predictions about the word before we read.  Luckily, this was a new word to the whole class! Then, as I read we used green to write down our inferences as we read more clues during the book.  About half way through, we stopped making inferences until we had all of our clues at the end.  The pink words were our inferences about the meaning of the word after we had used all of the clues.  We outlined the word "terrible" as the word we felt was our best inference, before confirming in the dictionary.  It was a great visual for the kids to see how our inferences get better with more clues from the author.

Animal Riddles: I used a website that showed animal riddles to get the kids using their schema in a fun way.  They loved guessing the animals, and then I would ask questions about what they already knew to help them make their inferences.  The next day, I wrote my own animal riddle and they had to write down their "schema" for what helped them.  I had them cover up the poem with a folder so they couldn't look at all the clues at once.  It was fun to see how their inferences changed with more clues.

The kids got to write their own "What am I?" poems the next day to put up on our bulletin board.  As you can tell, I have a ranch theme in my room, hence the cowboy hats.  On the board, I stapled a baggie that had post-it notes and sharpened pencils so that the board could be interactive.  When kids switch for math, RtI, or Guided Reading, they can make a quick inference. If their work is done early, they are able to go to the hallway to make some inferences about their friends' poems as well.  Who knew inferencing could be so fun?!

Click here for the sheet they used!

 Here is the title page I used (and updated at home with a graphic) to put on my bulletin board. 

 Title Page

I'm sad that our inferencing unit is almost over, because it is one of my favorites, but glad that these skills will keep coming up in the future!  

Making Inferences...with my dog?!

My mom was right!  I am cute!

Yes!  And my kids loved it!  When I went in over break to organize my files I brought my dog, Scout, because he just loves to play in the big field behind our school.  It's great for me in the winter because he just runs and runs and I don't have to do much.

I snapped a photo of Scout when he was outside, and then I decided to take a tour of the school with him since nobody was there to take more pics of him. I put the pictures into PowerPoint, and then made a lesson where the kids had to use the clues in the pictures with what they knew in their schema about our school, and then make an inference about where Scout was.  Each one was pretty easy, but I wanted them to understand the concept with something easy, before heading into a book.


Scout visited the bathroom, cafeteria, gym, computer lab, office, library, said the Pledge of Allegiance to our school flag, and the playground.  The kids thought it was so much fun to see my dog at school!

Of course, I also played it up like he opened my class door and escaped, and we had to use clues to figure out where he went in the building before I finally found him.  Can you believe NONE of them asked who took the pictures! Haha...love them!

Here is the sheet I used for the kids to write down the clues they saw in the picture, and the inference they made based on those clues.  I also added a blank one so if you wanted to take pictures of a stuffed animal, funny toy, or another object in your room, you could do that too!
Making Inferences Intro.