Snowy Day Inferencing Investigation

     To work on the reading comprehension strategy of inferring, the students of Connected 1.0 became investigators this week. To infer in reading, you have to use your schema (your background knowledge) and the clues the author gives you to infer things that might not be written on the page.
We read a story about Tim and his grandma. Tim and his grandma were spending a snowy day together while Tim's mom went to work. When she came home at 4 o'clock, Tim and Grandma were no where to be found. However, they left many clues about what they had been up to during their "snow day."
     As inference investigators, each group of students got an envelope with some of the evidence Tim's mom collected. As a group, the investigators went through their envelopes. They would write down the piece of evidence and then infer what Tim and his grandma might have been doing. For example, one group had a McDonald's french fry container, so they inferred that Tim and Grandma had McDonald's for lunch.

 Some of the evidence was tricky.  For example, one group had a wrapper and some of the group members inferred that Tim and Grandma had a cupcake for snack while the other investigators in the group thought maybe they ate muffins for breakfast.  Great ideas, both could be correct.  Later, the group found a recipe for muffins and decided the wrapper was in fact from blueberry muffins!  The groups did a nice job collaborating before they wrote down their inferences.  One group decided they had to all put their arms in to agree.  If all their arms weren't in, it meant they had to have some more discussion.

 

The investigators used the evidence to figure out many of the activities that Tim and his grandma did all day.  They still had a question to answer, where were Tim and grandma at 4 o'clock when his mom came home.  One group had a movie schedule with the 4 o'clock showtime for frozen circled.  That was it!  Great job inference investigators!   After all that hard work and thinking, we went out to recess for our own snowy day fun!