What is an inference?

Dear Families,

According to the dictionary an “inference” is a conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning.  A deduction, conclusion, speculation, guess etc.  Our class has been working on making smart inferences in our read aloud and independent reading.  I have noticed that the class in general often makes inferences not based on evidence from the book.  This is typical for this age group.  They often think and reason based on their own feelings in a circumstance in a book and do not consider the character as a whole.  Students often don’t think about the details from the text and then conclude something not grounded in fact.  For this reason you need to confer with your children at home and make sure they can touch the line where they inferred something.  Literally we need to understand the story, but as the books become more sophisticated it is apparent that in order for a child to understand it they must develop their own inferences.   There are many different “kinds” of inferences.

The character is jumping up and down-hugging themselves-ran to bus.  Therefore, my inference is that is must be winder and it is cold out.

Here is some of the work we did last week. As we read out read aloud I taught them these things:

-Read can pay attention to how a character is acting, thinking, feeling and what he or she says and figure out how they FEEL.  Readers can also pay attention to those aspects and judge a character and come up with an adjective to describe them, a CHARACTER TRAIT.  Readers can build vocabulary by coming up with many words to describe that character.  *Use a children’s Thesaurus and look up adjectives to describe a character.

-readers must figure out the motivation for a certain action and DRAW A CONCLUSION about it. Why is the character acting that way?  Why is he/she doing that?

This week we will focus in on the PATTERNS that a character follows and when those PATTERNS CHANGE.  This will give us clues as to the THEME of the book.  You might want to purchase this book and talk with your child about it at home.  *Or even re-read it together.

Housekeeping

• The students received a Scholastic Order on Friday.  If you would like to place an order type in my class code, MJDFM on the web site.  Please make all orders online by October 30th.  I have a lot of points and the more they purchase through me I can purchase more books for our class library.
• Kindly hand in permission slips for our first field trip as soon as possible.  I need to pay the Park Rangers in advance.
• There seems to be a strange glitch in the ReadWorks web site.  It is saying that you submitted it late.  Don’t worry about it.  Just ignore it.  I have no idea why it is happening.
• I put in most grades to School Loop although I forgot some grades at home today.  I will input all of the spelling test scores, and homework and behavior grades by this Wednesday.
• Because of the short week and our first publish date, I am suspending the WN portion of homework this week.  That means that your child need to complete only one reading response in their notebook and the new ReadWorks article by Friday.

Best,

Christy