We started inferencing right on Day 1...with the Who is Mrs. J? game (see page link above or click HERE). I provided pictures and students had to infer something about me based on the facts those pictures contained.
We infer all the time, in all levels of literacy: in what we read, what we see (media texts) and hear (oral texts) and we create inferences when we write.
We started with 'stating the obvious'. If a book cover has a dog on it...probably the book is about a dog! (We have been using book covers as our main source for inferring media images because students in this class love books and we have so many samples at the ready!)
But what DEEPER CONNECTION can we make about this 'dog book' based on the evidence on the cover? What kind of dog is it? What is the pose? Anything else on the cover? What does the title imply? What colours are used and what are the associations with those colours?
I want students to make deeper, more complex connections. Today, I returned their CASI reading comprehension assessments...many of the questions require students to INFER. We looked at the difference between level 1 thru 4 responses. The higher end responses typically involved an inference that was MORE COMPLEX. So, yes, we can infer that a character is athletic because they play basketball but a more complex inference is to say that that character is responsible or trustworthy because they fullfilled a promise to return to college. The first example is an obvious connection...the second example less so.
Here is another great example of a DEEPER CONNECTION that happened in class this week totally by accident.
As our reward for Terry Fox fund raising, we watched a movie and had popcorn. The movie we watched was "We Bought a Zoo." I asked the students to notice who wrote the screenplay...too often, the writers are overlooked and go unnoticed in media, though they are the backbone of the entertainment industry (no script = no movie!). We ended up looking it up via google and ended up at the imdb movie site...where we saw THIS movie poster.
"Hey!" One of the students exclaimed. "Why isn't the son in the poster?" The teenaged son, Dylan, is missing from this poster. Why was that?! Spontaneously, we started to look at the poster critically, as if it were a book cover. What message is this trying to convey? What meaning is assigned to those images? Why is the cute little girl so prominate but not the gloomy, moody teenage son? What do they want the viewer to INFER about the movie based on this poster? Some of the associations included: family (man, woman and child), happiness (they are smiling, the girl is in yellow, which is associated with happiness),
Someone in the class noted that the girl was 'like the sun'. BINGO! Level 4 connection! Yes, she is like the sun! She is in yellow, she is high in the sky. What do we associate with the sun? Explain what you mean by 'the sun' and you have inferred at a DEEPER level.
I love when learning happens spontaneously like this. It wasn't something I planned but our interest took us there and we extended the skills we have been practising outward, to this movie poster.
We will continue to look at inferences in reading, writing, media and oral texts and I will continue to push students to look beyond 'the obvious'.
PS. The screenwriters of "We Bought a Zoo" are Cameron Crowe and Aline Brosh McKenna, in case you were wondering!
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