Digging Deeper with Inferring

This comic helps us to think of how our students sometimes feel when we ask them to infer. 

We could understand this comic (which is a very small amount of text), but only after using different strategies and having conversations with others to help us understand.

Let's think of this when we ask our students to read text that may not seem complex to us but could be very challenging for their growing minds. 

2 things we discussed that will be SUPER helpful in guiding our kids to think deeper:

1. TIME-it takes ALOT of time to be able to think through a complex inferring prompt. Ensuring the kids have plenty of time to reason through and think about it will help them gain confidence and take time in their independent reading to think reasonably. 

2. CONVERSATION-Just like adults, our students need to be able to talk about concepts that are hard to grasp. If they are able to hear others' thoughts and pair them with their own (along with text evidence), they are much more likely to have a thoughtful, more targeted response.

Here are some BRILLIANT thoughts that our PLCs came up with from the Inferring Training on Monday:

 

Quotes from Tanny McGregor's Comprehension Connections book (the chapter on Inferring):

“Reading is important-read between the lines. Don’t swallow everything.”

-Gwendolyn Brooks, poet

“You can’t tell any kind of story without having some kind of theme, something to say between the lines.”

-Robert Wise, filmmaker

“What I like in a good author isn’t what he says, but what he whispers.”

-Logan P. Smith, essayist

Justify with Uncle Si!

Focus on JUSTIFYING for REASONABLENESS is going to be HUGE!

This part of the standard is identical K-4:
Justify his or her thinking using objects, words, pictures, numbers, and technology.
Justify
STUDENT THINKING
Including, but not limited to:
• Objects
• Words
• Pictures
• Numbers
• Technology
Use
LOGICAL REASONING 

When I was searching for this standard, I typed in the word "Justify" on the VADs and found that it was listed this many times:

• Kinder-4 times
• 1st-3 times
• 2nd-7 times
• 3rd-12 times
• 4th-11 times

We will make an Uncle Si poster for anyone that is interested.

Maybe we could have it as a quick 2 minute morning routine? Or maybe it could be added to 1 question on the daily review? Brainstorm ideas with your group about how to use this in your current IFDs. Please SHARE any ideas that you have!
We can make sure to let Si be RIGHT every now and then so that the kids really have to think and justify whether it is reasonable or not.
The hard ones to come up with are the ones that aren't easily identified as wrong, which is of course what was hardest for our kids on STAAR.
Here are a couple to help get us started:
-A clock that has the minute hand right but not the hour hand (or other way around)
-A number sentence that is SOLVED but using the opposite operation:
 20-15=35 or  12x6=2
-A number that is represented with based ten blocks but with the place value switched:
l l l l . . .
34
Here are some more ideas from the Math meeting this week:

It's not just for Math!!!
Thanks to Mrs. Whitaker I realized that this could work for any subject, just as a tool to get them to think deeper:
Examples for ELA:

-I can spel Jack!

-I predict that Jack and Annie will be in the dinosaur age.
 

-The mushers were required to possess these items during the race or they would be disqualified.
synonym for possess:
own
We would hope the kids would say NO because just because you own something, doesn't mean it is in your possession. And just because something is in your possession doesn't mean that you own it.