Scaffold & Support: Making Inferences Anchor Charts

Are some of your students plateauing in the area of reading comprehension? They can give you a basic re-tell, but when it comes to developing ideas about the character or determining the author's lesson, they're struggling. How can we best support students in making good inferences?

Just like any phonics structured literacy lesson, we’re not leaving it up to chance: direct, explicit teacher modeling. Show students exactly how you figured out your new idea. And then provide students with many, many opportunities to practice with constructive feedback.

Let’s break down the process of making an inference:

Re-telling and Summarizing: Strategies and Interventions

So, how are your interventions going?  Are your students making progress in the area of re-telling and summarizing?

As teachers of reading, we all know that if a student cannot re-tell the story, he/she will have difficulty making deeper inferences, answering questions about the text, connecting with the characters, and, most importantly, enjoying the story. And re-telling, along with summarizing, is a skill that can be honed beginning in kindergarten all the way to college (think of all those undergraduate and graduate students who write abstracts summarizing research).  As an interventionist teacher supporting second and third grade students in the area of reading, I am constantly grappling with how to best support my little friends with their re-tell and/or summary {fiction texts...nonfiction texts need their own blog post!}.  After reading a book during guided reading, I would pull out a graphic organizer, and think to myself, "this doesn't really match the story structure," or "this doesn't allow the student to include the most important details."  So I began to look at the results of my assessments more carefully, searched some of the professional literature, and began differentiating my approaches in order to better break down this important component of comprehension.

Monitoring Your Reading = Passing Level 1 of a Video Game

So I've put in a few years of trial and error into creating this resource, Re-telling and Summarizing Fiction Texts:  Interventions and Strategies.  I can tell you how I've put in my heart and soul into creating these graphic organizers and anchor charts to help my students, and I really think they will help your learners, too.  And eventually, I will get into the details of each strategy and how they address specific student needs and text structures.  But instead, I'm going to begin with the ending because it's my favorite part of this story, really the best part of the story:  winning level one of the video game.

Clip art courtesy of Paula Kim Studio

Determining the author's purpose: What is the author trying to teach us?

Sooooooo...my little darlings are having a difficult time figuring out why the author wrote the book, and if he's trying to teach us a lesson.   Planning is rough when you only have twenty minute increments to teach such a difficult concept, and for these students, I really have to model and break down the thinking process.  So....here goes...gulp...

I first made an anchor chart with the direct teaching point that authors write for a reason:

Text-to-Self Connections: Sheila Rae the Brave

One of personal favorite comprehension lessons is teaching students to make connections to the text.  Debbie Miller has wonderful lessons in Reading With Meaning.  When I grow up, I would like to be her...sigh...

Anyway, one of my favorite October activities is making connections to Sheila Rae the Brave by Kevin Henkes.