We all know how important it is to explicitly teach comprehension skills. Today’s post is on the skills of inference and prediction.
Inferring can be defined as; to derive by reasoning; conclude or judge from premises or evidence. The reader uses clues to figure out what something means which is not literally stated (reading between the lines).
“Inferring is the bedrock of comprehension, not only in reading. We infer in many realms. Our life clicks along more smoothly if we can read the world as well as text. If our boss looks grumpy in the morning, it might not be the best day to ask for a raise. … Inferring is about reading faces, reading body language, reading expressions, and reading tone as well as reading text (Harvey, Goudvis 2007 p.105). This quote is taken from the book Strategies that Work, it is EXCELLENT !!!!!! (I used it a lot when I was teaching). I have provided the link to the book depository below which has the book for $34.91.
http://www.bookdepository.com/Strategies-That-Work-Stephanie-Harvey/9781571104816
As with any skill we need to model it first and then gradually move towards independence. This allows us to scaffold the children which ultimately leads to success.
1. Demonstration | 1. I do, you watch. |
2. Guided practice | 2. I do, you help. |
3. Independent practice | 3. You do, I help. |
4. Application | 4. You do, I watch. |
When we traditionally think about teaching these strategies to our students we think of books. But how about using books and videos as these are both forms of text. The video today is a short film by Lucas Martell which is wordless. The video allows for great inferring and prediction. We can predict, what does the man do for a job? What will happen next? It also allows for lots of inferring as we need to infer the characters feelings and thoughts, cause and effect etc.
Enjoy
Does any have any other great videos they use?
I will be posting videos using the skills of inference all week.
I really enjoyed watching this, Kelly; thanks for posting it.
I can see loads of possible ways of using this for discussion with students in the middle years: get them to identify the clues in the text that enables inference about the man’s job; identify the parts of the text that require connections with prior knowledge, those sorts of things.
I can see this would also be useful when working with teachers to get them thinking about what constitutes making meaning from text as well as ways to teach inference.
Cheers,
Helen