Making Inferences

What a week! Although it was so nice to see my little owl friends again after our week off, the rain made our week a little crazy.  We were only able to participate in Walk-A-Thon on Friday and we spent the majority of the week inside, avoiding the pouring rain.  Today has been beautiful though so I hope you take some time to go outside!

One of the many things we learned this week was inferring.  We have been talking about using our schema (prior knowledge or what we already know about something) to help us make predictions and share connections when we read.

Well, this week we took that a step farther and learned the word: infer.  Inferring is when you take your schema (prior knowledge) and clues (in this case: illustrations in a story) to make inferences.  

For example, we talked about how if we were walking to the lunch room and we smelled something sweet in the air, we might infer that cookies, brownies or some other type of tasty treat was being made.

Once again, I stole this idea from a great blog I found on Pinterest.com.  We practiced our inferring skills this week by using this mystery box.  I told the kids I put something in the box and they made guesses as to what they thought it might be.  Then, I gave them clues.  Using their schema (what could fit in this size  box) and the clues I gave them (ex: It is a rectangle) the students made inferences.  It was a fun activity and one student guessed the actual item: a greeting card! We practiced inferring with the story No David! as well.  Please encourage your child to work on this skill at home with their JRL book.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.  I'm going to go for a bike ride!