We have been working on making inferences in our reading. An inference is made when we use clues to figure something out that was not completely explained. We often make inferences when we read. We can infer things about the characters and situations we read about. We can also infer the meaning of words that we don't know by using our text clues and background knowledge.
To practice making inferences, we solved a snow day mystery. We read about a boy named Tim who woke up one day to discover he had a snow day. His grandma spent the day with him while his mom went to work. When she returned home at 4:00 that afternoon, Tim and his grandma were nowhere to be seen. Tim's mom looked around the house for clues about what they had done that day and where they might be. We used these clues to infer what they had done that day and where they were when Tim's mom got home.
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The students worked in groups and each group had a
different envelope full of clues. |
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The groups looked at their clues and inferred what Tim
and his grandma had done that day. |
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When all of the groups were finished we came together
as a class and shared what we had found and inferred. |
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| Tierney's evidence sheet |
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Each group used the activities that
we inferred as a class. Together, they
came up with a logical time line of the day's
events. |
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Each group then illustrated their timeline. It was interesting
to learn that inferences can only take us so far. We saw
that although each group had the same activities, the order
in which they thought they occurred was different between
each group! |
