I Can Infer that...

One of the most challenging things for my fifth graders in the dreaded inferring/drawing conclusion task that looms on the lovely upcoming assessments. All year I try to do as much of this as I can, but it's always a struggle- for them and for me. 


At last week's KEEN conference several presenters demonstrated and showed pictures of their kids (mostly middle and high schoolers) doing various verbal/kinesthetic dances, chants and songs to make sense of all sort of content. While I do tons of kinesthetic activities in my classes, I haven't done a lot of this sort of stuff. 


Soooo... after lots of web browsing and other investigating (AKA begging, borrowing, stealing) here's what I came up with to help my students grasp & practice this business of inferences. 


Great video I found on youtube:

Power Point I made to do with students:
(I put in one slide at a time, feel free to snip and insert into your own document)

Finally... a poster I put in my room. This is based on some posters that other teachers shared on Pinterest. I guess this is the borrowing and stealing segment of our show.  We also made up a rythmic chant with motions to help us remember the 3 steps of inferring. 

Here's hoping that none of my students will be "left behind" (insert sarcasm here) and that they'll all demonstrate their knowledge of inferring or at least be able to get those questions right on the test.  Hopefully I will draw the conclusion that I'm finally on the right track!