Making Inferences

We've moved out of nonfiction for a little bit and are focusing on making inferences.  This is a hard skill for so many kids and I wanted to make sure I introduced and explained the skill well and gave my kiddos ample opportunities to apply and practice it.

We started by making this anchor chart to explain what an inference is and some sentence stems to use when discussing our inferences.

After that, we played "What's in my purse?" which was inspired by Abby from The Inspired Apple. 

The next day we worked on some pages from this freebie from Have Fun Teaching.

click the pic to snag it from TPT

My kids were good at determining who the narrator was and where the story was taking place thanks to these worksheets.

Next, we continued inferring with task cards.  I used this differentiated set from Teaching with a Mountain View:

I started with the picture cards with question prompts.  We went through the first few together, then I gave each table group 2 cards.  As a group they discussed the cards then scooted around the room.

 They loved explaining what they thought was happening and why.  I love that there were leading questions for some of my reluctant friends, while my super enthusiastic kids were off and running with what they saw.

By this point my kiddos had a good grasp on the skill so I wanted them to apply it more to text.  I broke out these task cards from Rachel Lynette:

We worked on writing responses as a class then I put the cards in a literacy work station.

This is a skill that we'll constantly refer back to during Reading Workshop, but I feel like my kiddos have a good foundation in this important skill.