I love Chris Van Allsburg books to teach inferencing. My favorite to introduce it is The Wretched Stone. If you haven't read it I am about to ruin the mystery, so you might skip this. After we're finished reading aloud, I ask the kids What could the stone symbolize?
We do a 2 column chart and go through the book and collect all the details. The left side says The text states, and we list the text evidence there. The second column is That reminds me (making connections) and we list the possibilities. Kids will everything from a radio to a computer to a TV. Then we all decide which theory can we most support. Finally kids will put the text clues together to and infer a "television" I don't know for sure that was Allsburg's intention but we have so much great text evidence we feel confident we can support that theory. Then I teach emotion words using the wordless Mercer Mayer books A boy, a dog, and a frog. You'd be amazed the range of emotions the kids can infer using the pictures, IF you have first taught them a range of emotion words. I make them give me at least 2 and hopefully more clues that would lead them to that inference. I find most state assessments use character emotions for their inference questions. We work on this for a semester, and that is in sixth grade! Gina ************************************ _________________________________________________________________ You live life online. So we put Windows on the web. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/127032869/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
