Hi! I teach 2nd grade and we have recently started being required to teach shared reading lessons. During shared reading we are supposed to focus on one of seven comprehension strategies, including making inferences. I would like to know how other teachers go about teaching making inferences. I have planned to use a short poem that is very open ended. I'll make a transparency so that it is easily viewed by everyone. I'll read it aloud and then we will read it chorally. Then I plan to explain that inferences are using clues the author gives and what we already know about real life to draw a conclusion. After that, I plan to model my own inference and then put my students into pairs where they will make their own inferences. What am I missing? Please help.
If you work on questioning you can focus on "in my head" questions. Those are questions with inferred answers.
You could role play and act something out. Then have the kids infer the meaning. For example, if you sit on the floor and pout they can infer that you are angry. If you pretend you're on the phone and you're rolling your eyes and hanging up afterwards in a flustered way... they can infer that you are annoyed. If you jump for joy.. they can infer that you are happy. These can be done one at a time... or a couple at a time to fit into a 15 minute brief lesson. Then you can talk about how inferring is knowing something with it being explicitely stated. Then once they get the notion... you can then move on to inferring things from text. It's important that they first get the general concept of what inferences are. Poetry is good... but for 2nd graders make sure you pick the right poem because otherwise you could be dealing with something a bit too complex for them. (if the poem has abstract concepts.. metaphors.. or other things that might add to their confusion).
How about silent cartoons? Or comics? There is a lot of inference in comic strips and kids love them!
I'm not an elementary teacher, so take this for what it's worth. I really like 773's suggestion. One of the college prep reading teachers at the college I work for does something similar. She comes into class wearing all black, crying, mascara smugged, going on and on trying to "get ahold of herself". After about a minute of this act, she looks up, smiles, and asks the class what just happened. She uses that to springboard into a lesson on infrence and implication.
I was going to say the same thing as dizzykates. I accidently found out during summer school that comic strips, particularly one square ones, like Marmaduke, Family Circle or Ziggy really do require one to make inferences. It really worked as a lesson to break down their thought processes and verbalize the steps.
In my 2nd grade class I have used "The Important Book" to teach kids about inference. I will read them a page, leaving out the name of the object/subject, and when I'm finished, they raise their hands to see if they inferred correctly what the topic was. Fun and quick activity.
