Sunday, October 13, 2013

Teaching Making Inferences

Wow!  It has been over a month since I have made a post.  I apologize for my absence. The past few weeks have been extremely busy! One of the many things on my To Do List for today is to blog about the fun activity we used for making inferences. We have been reading stories, creating charts, and using task cards to make inferences, but I wanted I do something different with my students...something that would help seal their learning.  Well, we made S'mores!  One of my favorite TpT sellers is Deb Hanson.  She has created an awesome activity called Let's Make S'more Inferences that I used with my students.

The students were super excited when I told them that they would be making S'mores to help them remember how to make an inference!  This was a three part lesson.  The first thing I did was review making inferences.  As I reviewed making inferences, I related the ingredients of a S'more to using information from the text and using background knowledge.  Students were then given the actual ingredients and labeled each part on a paper towel.
Part One

The first Graham Cracker represented the text clues, the second Graham Cracker represented student's backgroud knowledge (schema) the marshmellow represented the inference, and the chocolate represented another inference that could be made.

Part 2 of the lesson required students to make actual inferences.  Students were given six short reading passages.  We completed the first one together.  Students underlined information from the text, discussed with their learning club what they already knew, and made inferences together.  The students then completed the remaining five on their own.  Several of my kiddos who struggled with making inferences were able to make the connection once I referred them back to the S'mores on the paper towels!  This worked like magic!
  
Part Two

During part three of the lesson, students created a S'more craftivity.  They wrote their text clues, background knowledge, and inferences from each reading passage on the ingredients of the S'mores and clued just the tops of them together to create a flipbook.  The S'mores flipbooks were then clued to a sheet of construction paper.

Parts One, Two, & Three

The students had a ball with this Let's Make S'more Inferences!  After they completed the activity, they enjoyed their S'mores!