In chapter 8 of our textbook it talks about teaching kids how to draw inferences and how to read between the lines. Having never taught older children I can only imagine how difficult this must be. Having students comprehend the literal meaning of the text is often hard enough. Drawing inferences requires higher-level thinking and teaches students to look beyond the text.
Our textbook outline four steps in teaching students how to draw inferences. First, they must activate their prior knowledge related to the topic. Second, they need to look for the author’s clues when reading. Third, they should ask questions and try to connect their background knowledge to the author’s clues and then finally they can draw inferences by answering their questions.
I think the key in helping students learn how to draw inferences is to model the steps together as a class and provide several examples. It is also important to read and reread the text. This way the students can comprehend the literal meaning of the text and then they can go back and look for the deeper meaning.
Inferencing is definitely a difficult skill to teach. Even older students have difficulty thinking beyond the actual words. I remember hours spent in high school and college thinking and writing about the complex layers of literature. I wish I could remember how I learned the skills needed for this task but I think the main thing is just repeated practice. With younger students we can just try to get them thinking in any way about the text beyond the actual words of the story. Whether it is discussing how a character feels or why we think they act in a certain way, any practice becomes helpful. One activity I like to do with my students is to make them a "co-author" of the story. I might have the students write another page to the end of the story to see what the character would do next or have the children change the end of a story. We then can talk about why or why not their ideas may be appropriate based on the rest of the text. This can of course be difficult with the very young kids as the texts aren't too deep, but even limited practice with these skills can help them later in life as they try to draw inferences.
ReplyDeleteAnother fun activity we do which will help them later with inferencing is playing Mystery Guessing games. By providing them with certain clues for a mystery they naturally start to make inferences about the situation. When we talk about why they made certain decisions, the children become more aware of their thought processes and can explain it to the peers. I find this activity very useful and the kids love it!