Chapter 9 discusses strategies that teachers can use to teach students how to infer and visualize.
--This chapter contains an excellent definition of "inferring". Jamie stated that she has difficulty explaining what an inference is to her students. She tells her students to "read between the lines", but not all of them understand this phrase. She plans to use the book's definition from now on. It says, "inferring involves merging background knowledge with text clues to come up with an idea that is not explicitly stated in the text." Does anyone else explain it differently to their class? Any suggestions would be great!
--The chapter also explained that visualizing is like "making a movie in your mind". This is a great way to explain it to kids! It helps them understand what they are reading. Lauren explained that when kids watch movies that are based on a book, it ruins their image of the characters. The picture that readers create in their mind usually doesn't match how the movie portrays the characters. It leaves the reader confused and/or disappointed. For example, Bridge to Terabitha is one of Jamie's favorite childrens book. She was ecstatic to go see the movie when it came out, but it ended up being an enormous let down. The characters and setting were not what she had been visualizing in her mind all these years. Many times teachers show the movie of a book after reading it in class. If this is the case, we suggest doing a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the characters from the book and movie. The teacher should remind the students that the people in the movie are only actors. How do you feel about watching a movie that is based on a book? Do you watch the movie before reading the book?
--There are some excellent graphs and charts in this chapter that can be used to teach inferencing. For example, you could divide paper into 4 columns to help infer the meaning of an unfamiliar word. First the student lists the unfamiliar word from the text. Then, he writes the inferred meaning. Next, he writes the clue that he used to help him come up with the meaning (i.e. picture, reading on). Lastly, he writes a sentence using the word. Another chart that can be created contains 3 columns. Students can list their background knowledge (first column) and text clues (2nd column). Then, they create the inference (3rd column). Does anyone else have suggestions? Please share...
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Our professor last semester had used the phrase "lifting the words off the page to see what the author really meant to say" in order to explain inferring. I've used that with my students and they seem to get it. I also model a one-sentence story such as "The bird built a nest in the tree." and then ask the students "Why do you think the bird built the nest?" When they tell me it's b/c the bird wanted a place to lay it's eggs, I tell them they just made an inference. They get excited when they realize how simple this strategy really is. I also tell them that when they see or hear the phrase "what do you think" as part of a question, it means they are expected to infer and that the answer will not be found in the text. They need to use their schema to come up with an answer. So that seems to give them a cue as to whether they should look in the text for an answer (literal) or whether they should think deeper and make connections, etc.
ReplyDeleteThis year we've talked about "making movies in our minds" as we read. My first graders totally get this! When we read "The Napping House" by Audrey Wood, we practiced visualizing and "making movies." They loved it. I was thrilled when we were sharing during a Writer's Workshop lesson and a student announced he was "making a mental image." Now the class will often comment about the mental images they are creating about their classmates' writing!
ReplyDeleteA great writing activity related to this is "Writing to Music." I play a piece of a song (no words...) to the kids, and they imagine it's background music to a movie. They write down a sentence or two about what the movie is about. For example, today I played loud drumming music, and students imagined soldiers winning a war, people at a concert, and aliens coming down from outerspace. It's cool to see how they "visualize" music!
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