Drawing Conclusions/Making Inferences

Last week, my mentor gave me some advice that made my teaching world clearer.  I was having trouble deciding what plans to make for the six weeks because the curriculum from our district is very general and I needed a way to fill in the specifics of my lesson plans.  I asked my mentor what she was planning to do for the next couple of weeks and she informed me.  Then she said, focus on one skill a week since the STAAR is coming up in April.  Such a simple solution, but yet I hadn't thought of it!

 I looked at the data from both CBA tests (Curriculum Based Assessments which the students take every 9 weeks) to determine which skills my classes needed most work on.  I found that the biggest skill they needed help with, was Drawing Conclusions/Making Inferences.  So, I decided to focus on re-teaching that skill this week.  From now on, I will be focusing on one skill a week and incorporate it into my curriculum until the students take the STAAR test.

Today was the first day for teaching Drawing Conclusions and I'm hoping that if the kids hear about it for a whole week, it will stick.  I've decided to compare Drawing Conclusions to my students being detectives.  I told my students that detectives look for clues in crime scenes to help them solve the crime just like they have to look for clues in the story when reading to help them make conclusions about the story.  Detectives use both clues in the crime scene and what they know to figure out who committed the crime just like they have to use what they know (personal experience) and details (clues) that the author gives them in the story to draw a conclusion about the story.

As we were going through the lesson, one of my kids happened to make a mystery sound when I said the word detective.  I thought it was brilliant!  Now, I'm having all of my students make the same sound whenever I say detective, clues, or mystery.  I think this will help them remember what two things they need to do to draw conclusions about a story.  At the end of the week, I will be giving the students an assessment to see if they understood the week's lessons or if they need more practice on the skill.  Next week, we will be working on grade level vocabulary!