I have an observation the week after next. I was told it had to be reading and it needs to be an hour long lesson. My reading lessons are usually 30 minutes, so I'm drawing a blank. :help: I think I would like to do a lesson on inferencing since it is a skill that the kids usually do poorly on. Does anyone know of any engaging lessons on inferencing that would last an hour? It would be best if I could pull in some kind of manipulatives, too since the P really likes that kind of thing. Thank you!!
The first thing that came to mind was to read or tell them a little story and then have them draw a picture illustrating the story. Then, as you walk around you can choose a few to share up front. You can ask questions like, "Joey, I see that you drew boots on the main character. I didn't see anything in the story that said she was wearing boots. Why did you draw boots on her?" Hopefully he'll say something like, "It was snowing in the story so I thought she would have boots on." Using some of their pictures could lead into a discussion about what making inferences is and how it's a valuable skill. Then you could read them some sentences and ask them what they can infer from the sentences. For example, read the sentence "Jamie could hear the leaves crunch under her feet, and she wanted to stay and play longer, but she knew her mom would be calling her for dinner soon." Then you could ask questions like, "How old do you think Jamie is? How do you know? What season is it? How do you know? What time of day is it? How do you know?" etc... Also, you could have them look at a picture or photograph and write about it, then discuss what they see in the picture and what inferences they can make using those visual clues.
Found these links for you, too: http://www.brainpopjr.com/readingandwriting/comprehension/makeinferences/grownups.weml http://www.mrmanko.com/MakingInferences.html http://www.gamequarium.com/readquarium/skillsi-p.html http://ethemes.missouri.edu/themes/1675
When I taught inferences, I would usually start with a situation of clues for the students. I.e. "You hear the screeching of tires, followed by a loud crunch and the sound of shattered glass. What do you think happened? Why?" This would introduce them to the concept that they are detectives and that inferences are just so. They put together the clues the author gives (IN THEIR BRAIN) to fill in the blank information. Another good activity I've done is to take some expressively drawn comic strips and remove the dialogue. The students can come up with the dialogue using the inferences they've picked up from the artwork. "Why would they be saying this? What in the picture makes you think that" kind of thing. And, of course, can't go wrong with an interactive read aloud complete with think alouds for the first few inferences. I hope these vague ideas help.
Here is a link (it's a Word Doc saved online, so when you click the link they'll save to your computer) that my first grade team decided we were going to use 2nd semester for an inference lesson because that is our lowest area as well. And here is the site where we got them from, this is a page for Mandy Gregory's inferencing mini lessons. I didn't see the cards there, I googled for them.
