Dear Room 19 Families,
As parent conferences come to an end, I wanted to
say how much I enjoyed meeting with each and every one of you. I hope you walked away with a good sense of
how your child is doing as they progress towards independent application of the
third grade standards. I am very proud
of your children in so many ways-their spirit, individuality and good nature.
READER’S WORKSHOP-INFERENCING
As I mentioned in our next focus
for reader’s workshop is making inferences or READING BETWEEN THE LINES. ****
Please note the new format for the reading response. Your child will be
in charge of a reading log, a character web, and a letter including inferences
made about a character. ****There is an
example attached in their home reading log or they have it to put into their
journals. When readers make inferences, they create personal meaning
from text.
Inferential thinking arises as a
result of questions the reader asks about information not explicitly stated in
the book. Comprehension occurs only when the reader can combine what is
read with relevant background experiences/knowledge to “fill in the blanks”
between the author’s meaning and the actual words on the page. Good readers
must constantly be able to make many types of inferences as they read: figure
out unknown vocabulary words, implied main idea, omitted words, character
motivation or characteristics, author’s purpose, conclusions suggested by the
text, cause/effect relationships, and pronoun/adverb referents, to name a few.
When readers are able to infer they are more likely to remember and apply what
they read; gain new knowledge and insights; reflect about their reading; and
analyze and discriminate text and authors.
We started by reading some poems and inferring what they were describing. I found a fun website to help introduce this
concept. If you go to this website you
can try it at home as well.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Ms. Lackey