Recycling and Inferring

Here is another activity that I found in, Comprehension Connections:  Bridges to Strategic Reading by Tanny McGregor.  I really like this one and we have fun with it in class.  I choose some of my recycling from home and bring it in to class.  I tell my class that there's a new family on my street and I haven't met them yet, but I'm curious about them, so I brought their recycling to try and figure out what they're like.  

The kids have to use the pieces of recycling to decide what the family is like.  One of the kids told me, "They're rich."  When I asked why he said, "They have bottled water."  When I asked how this shows that the family is rich, he explained, "Not everyone can afford to buy bottled water."  The kids work in small groups connecting the recycling "evidence" with their inferences about the family.  This leads us to the discussion of inferring while we're reading.  It can't be a wild guess.  You have to be able to back it up with a piece of evidence and explain how that evidence validates your inference.

You can click on the pictures above for organizers that I use when we start working with inferring.