Quotation Café
In this activity, students use headings, quotes, and visuals from a selection to make inferences and predict what the text will be about. Students get together and discuss inferences and predictions about the text that could be made from their text clues. This activity was designed to model the intellectual café scene where individuals could gather and share ideas.
Procedure:
1. Tell students the title of a reading selection that they will be reading.
2. Provide each student with a heading, quotation and visual from the reading
selection.
3. Have each student think about his/her clue and how it might fit into the main
idea of the text.
4. Students should share their text clue with other classmates and solicit their
opinions on what they believe the text is about.
5. Have students discuss the development of their predictions with a partner as they
hear more clues.
6. Students could then predict the sequence of events in the text.
7. Have a quick class discussion on the students’ predictions about the text.
8. Have students read the text. Periodically stop them to have them reflect on their
predictions.
Reference:
Zwiers, J. (2010). Making Inferences and Predictions. In Building Reading
Comprehension Habits in Grades 6–12 (pp. 99-121). Newark, DE:
International Reading Association.
Sticky Symbols and Drawings
In this activity, students create pictures on sticky notes that serve as visual reminders of information encountered in texts. Teachers can have students create symbols of concepts that have to be inferred from the reading selections. Students can then match the sticky notes with the text clues. Teachers can also instruct students to create sticky symbols and pictures for new concepts and ideas that they infer as they read.
Procedures
1. Discuss ideas and concepts that could be inferred from a text selection.
2. Model how to create a symbol for the concept and have students practice
making a symbol for the concept.
3. Have students match the concept from the text clues with the sticky note and
drawing that best supports it.
4. Have students continue to create more sticky symbols and drawings for ideas
and concepts that they will continue to encounter.
Extension: Create sticky symbols and drawings for comprehension skills like summarizing, predicting, and asking questions.
Reference:
Zwiers, J. (2010). Making Inferences and Predictions. In Building Reading
Comprehension Habits in Grades 6–12 (pp. 99-121). Newark, DE:
International Reading Association.
T+B=I Inference Machines
In this activity, students use a graphic organizer to help them integrate text clues and background knowledge to arrive at an inference. It was designed to help model what the brain is doing when an inference is generated.
Procedure:
1. Model how to find a text clue that lends itself well to making an inference. This
information should be put into the “Text” box.
2. Use information from the “Text” box to make an inference about the text. This
information should be placed in the “Inference” box.
3. Check your inference by listing background knowledge about the concept in the
“BK” box.
Observation-Inference Chart
The Observation-Inference (O-I) Chart was initially designed to help students make inferences from nontraditional texts like paintings, movies, and artifacts. Yet, it can be used with traditional texts as well. With this strategy, students use observational clues from the left side of chart to make inferences on the corresponding right side of the chart.
Procedure:
1. List or state observations from nontraditional or traditional texts.
2. Model how the observations in combination with background information
yield a particular inference.
3. Provide students with the O-I Chart and have them practice using text clues from
the left column to make inferences on the right column.
References:
Nokes, J. D. (2008). The observation/inference chart: Improving students’ abilities
to make inferences while reading nontraditional texts, Journal of Adolescent
& Adult Literacy, 51 (7), 538-546.
Zwiers, J. (2010). Making Inferences and Predictions. In Building Reading
Comprehension Habits in Grades 6–12 (pp. 99-121). Newark, DE:
International Reading Association.
ARTICLE 1 QUOTATIONS ALL QUOTATIONS ARE MADE FREE OF
BIOCATBIOSEARCH TECHNOLOGIES CUSTOM MICROARRAY OLIGONUCLEOTIDES QUOTATION FORM INSTRUCTIONS PLEASE
CLIENTS NAME MRMRSMISSMSTITLE SEND QUOTATION TO TELEPHONE FAX
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