The beginning of the year is filled with lots of get to know you activities. But this year I wanted to make it a bit more academic, getting right into the nitty gritty of academic language from the get go. So I turned one of those traditional "get to know you" activities into a lesson in Inferring!
First, I had the students create a "Me Box" in class. I used these instructions here, but the basic gist is that they filled the box with items that were special to the individual student. The student chose what items to include, all with the idea that these items told the story of who they were. While we made the box together in class, the students brought the items from home.
Once all of the boxes were complete, the other students in the class walked around the room looking at the items contained within each box. Using a sticky note, the kids tried to make an inference about the personality or likes of the classmates. They had to think about what was actually in the box and how those items connected together. For example, if there was a basketball trophy, some baseball cards, and a ticket stub from a local football game, the kids could reasonably infer that the student like sports or was athletic himself. If there was a bunch of art supplies, drawings, and things of that nature, the students could infer that the box creator was artistic or liked being creative.
Logistically, I had the boxes placed on the students' desks. I asked each child in my class to go to one box and take time to look through it, making inferences on a sticky note. After a few minutes, they put the sticky note on the box and moved to a different box. They did this about 5 times. I then gathered all of the sticky notes and put them on white paper. We instantly had a bulletin board full of inferences!
How do you introduce inferring to your students?
I love this!
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