Inferencing: It's All About the Plan

      My Guided Reading kiddos struggle with making inferences.  Actually, scratch that.  I struggle with teaching my kiddos how to make inferences.  How many of you are in the same situation?  Think about it - making inferences has a lot do with background information and determining relationships between evidence from the text and our background knowledge.  It is really hard to imagine not having that knowledge when you do, and then add the pressure of trying to explain how to do that to others. People who are good at making inferences tend to make them quickly, making it difficult to figure out how to break down the steps for students.
      At the same time, my students were working on developing constructed responses for questions.  I thought they were struggling with explaining evidence, but after a couple of weeks, I realized they were actually having trouble citing inferential evidence - they would ramble on and on, but never really cite the evidence that started their train of thought.  They needed help in identifying they were making an inference.

What I Know Chart from Linder

     Anyway, my brain was super exhausted just trying to figure out how to teach all of that.  Then, enter Chart Sense.
     
Chart Sense by Rozlyn Linder is one of my three go-to books when lesson planning.  I love the book because not only does it include anchor charts (which I love!), it also includes ideas for scaffolding and instructional tips.  Her section on textual evidence includes a chart called "What I Know," which is what I used this year for teaching inferencing to my students in Guided Reading and it worked really well.  So, here's how I planned.
      First, when I introduce a new skill in my Guided Reading class I use movies, commercials, songs - basically, anything that is not print text.  I want them to practice the skill and be successful, so I go out of my way to make sure we do not start with a text where they could trip up over words, get confused about context, etc.  I also almost always go with literature/fiction "texts" first because I think those are easier for specific skills (except main idea - then I always start with something nonfiction).   In this case, we used Pixar shorts.  The questions I created to pair with the clips were similar to ones that our kiddos see on the constructed response portion of ISTEP (our state assessment in Indiana).  (Click here to get a copy of the clips and questions I use!  Less work for you! Yay!)  Students were working on constructed response and argumentative writing in their ELA class and I wanted to make sure I was still supporting their ELA class needs, too.  (My 6th grade ELA team is AMAZING and supportive of each other!  It makes collaboration between Guided Reading classes and ELA extremely successful!)
     Second, I make sure I model whatever I'm asking the kids to do.  In this case, I made the anchor chart 20x22 and laminated it so that I could use it over and over again.  We watched the first clip together as a class and I showed them the question.  Then, I made the kids move to our small group table and stand around the chart.  We went through steps of making an inference, according to the lesson from Linder.  They are:

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1. Read/View the text.
2. Read the question. 
3. List relevant details around the head. (Not evidence - don't use the word evidence.  Not all of these details will be used because technically they are not all evidence that will support a conclusion.  Our kids need to learn that evidence is a detail from the text, but not all details are evidence.)
4. Look for patterns/relationships between the details.  These could be similarities, contradictions, cause and effect, problem and solution, etc.
5. Determine what they mean.  So what is this the relationship and what inference can be made?

     It took about 10 minutes because I did all of the talking and modeling. I didn't ask the kids for any input.  This is extremely difficult for teachers, but important.  Model it for them without questioning and input the first time around.  Maybe the next time it can be an interactive model, but we need to model it without interruptions.
    Seems like a long process, right?  Truth be told - it is.  Our most fluent readers do this in a matter of seconds, but our struggling readers need to be taught to take these steps when they approach a challenging text.  Not only do they need to be taught these steps, but they need the opportunity to practice them over and over and over and over and over and over... get the idea?  We get bored with this repetition so we move on way before our kids are ready.  I can not stress this enough - give this time and opportunity.  We did one every two days (completing the chart one day and creating the constructed response the second day).

Click here to view on Amazon

     We eventually moved to short stories, specifically one-page passages.  I use stories from 25 Complex Text Passages to Meet the Common Core.  I have these books from grades 4-8.  I use the 5th grade book for my Guided Reading because it tends to be just above the current level of my class and I want to push them a bit. When I give them a passage for the first time, I ask them if there are any words they aren't sure how to pronounce and I go through and pronounce anything they need.  Then, we complete the chart for the text to answer questions (for this activity, I didn't use the questions that go along with the passages).  Same structure as the clips - one day on reading and completing the chart, one day for creating the constructed response.  We spend about two weeks doing this.  (While we we working on this, ELA teachers were working on constructed responses in class and using crime puzzle pictures to continue practicing using details to make inferences.  Again, multiple opportunities to practice the skill is so important.)
     But the kids won't always have the opportunity or time to create that chart and use it, so I show them how to follow the steps without the chart.  We underline details that will help us answer the given question.  Then, we mark the relationship between the details in the margin (our annotations).  We did this for about two weeks.
     Six weeks or more on the same seems like a lot, but for a Guided Reading group, it has big payoff.  I had 10 students in my Guided Reading class.  Five students moved to a new Guided Reading Group and two improved so much they graduated from Guided Reading.  More importantly, though, all 10 students showed more than a year's worth of growth in just a half a year!!!  They are THIS CLOSE to reading on grade level!!
     I hope this is something you can use as you return to the classroom in 2018!  Let me know if you have any questions.  Also, be sure to let me know if it helped, or how you tweaked it to make it better!

Love and Sparkle,