Make Your Masterpiece: Differentiated Inference Activty

I'm back for week 3 of the TpT sellers challenge: make your masterpiece with a new activity for that tricky skill of making inferences!

Inferences are hard, especially for some of my students, it's just hard to read between the lines. I created this activity using the same passages but with two different levels to help with differentiation.

Introducing: Whose Tablet Is It? (My district is 1:1 iPad, so I thought my students would like the tech theme)

In this activity, various community members have mixed up their tablets. Students must read the last webpage to figure out which tablet belongs to each community member. In level 1 there are visual clues as well as a more scaffold recording sheet. In level 2, the same passage is used, with no visual aids, and less scaffolding on the recording sheet.

Also included is a poster and two graphic organizers for ANY book that students can use to aid in this skill.

Feel free to check out this activity here if you'd like learn more about it!

1

Hands-On Learning: Skills Work

In my building, the current structure of our reading block is novel studies. In my small class, the students rotate between reading the novel and daily phonics/skill work. In my large reading class we utilize literature circles (focusing on skills that coincide with the book) and it's in between books that we really dig into skills.

This week has been a skills week.  It's been a blast thanks to my friend Catherine!


The first skill we worked on was inferencing. Not that the kiddos haven't had to infer throughout the year, but we were in need of a booster shot!

During the last sale, I picked up Catherine's inference activity.

Lots of anchor charts and notes to refresh students and review, which was terrific. The best part was the hands-on activity that had my students up and moving. {This week with our wacko weather had us full of wiggles that needed let out and about!}

Students were given one of the cards from the pack and three note cards to jot down their situations. I should have taken a close up of some of the cards, they did such a great job--creative and funny in many cases.

Once students had wrote their situation for the given topic, they were to raise their hand and look for another student with a hand raised to partner up with.

Students then read their note cards and their partners tried to guess the topic. After both partners had shared, students swapped topics and started again until they had traded three times.

For all of the movement, my room was so quiet! The students were sad when exit slip time came. The marks of a great lesson/activity.

The second activity I started today. It was on my plans all week, but who doesn't love a sale? Worth the early start to my morning to make copies. Although, my sleepy eyes didn't read all of the instructions, so my students dealt with an extra challenge---all of the cards were the same color. Scandalious, made the kiddos sweat, but they were able to do it!

Students had to work with a partner and figure out how to set up their main idea houses based on the cards that were drawn. Determining the difference between the topic and main idea was a bit challenging, but by the end of the hour, students had it down. 

Again, engaging day. Students learned more about some historical events that they didn't know too much about. Looking forward to our practice with science topics tomorrow!

Don't forget... TPT's BIG sale started today and ends tomorrow. Get some great resources at a great price while you can!

1

Animals Should Definitely NOT Wear Clothing

We have started to cover or review various reading skills during rotations the last couple of weeks. Yesterday we began to review inferences. With short weeks that stretch I decided to spice things up a bit.
First we talked about what it means to inference. Why good readers use this skill. How to use this skill. We practiced using the skill with a few short scenarios. Then for the fun part. Putting our inferencing skills to use.

We listened to the story Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing {I would have read it, but I couldn't find a copy anywhere close, good ol' Youtube to the rescue!} I covered my screen as the student's huddled around the table to hear the story. After the first animal was described as well as the reason why they shouldn't wear clothing, we discussed the scenario as a group. I then reminded the student's to use their visualization skills as well as inferencing skills as they listened to the rest of the book. 

Then the creative part. We became the illustrators for the book. I wrote the lines of text on index cards and the student's took clues from the text along with their own schema to create the pictures. After the pictures are complete we are going to compare them to the illustrators and see if our inferences were similar.

Even though they are 5th graders the kiddos are loving the chance to do something different, add a splash of color, and their  animals will make a fun statement in the hallway for parents to see during our rescheduled parent teachers conferences.  

I had the first line of the book on a piece of construction paper, then the rest of the lines of the book as they were written, my student's illustrations, and the actual illustrations were posted as well. 

This one cracks me up. The student is also into drawing those cars with spy equipment now, so his hen was being spied on too.

I think in the future, this could be a fun activity for my students to do when they write the book themselves. What animal would they like to choose? Why shouldn't that animal wear clothing? It could become a fun classroom book. 

4