lesson 4

Learning intention and success criteria

Objective: Good readers are good thinkers. They make inferences when reading to help make sense of the text and gain deeper understanding.

Learning Intention: WALT make inferences when we are reading.

Success Criteria:

I can:

identify text clues.
use my prior knowledge to decipher text clues.
record my inferences with supporting evidence.

inferring during reading

Warm up:

Choose one student to act out the following scenario (without other students knowing):

The student is to go outside the classroom and enter the room with a very obvious limp.

Student hands over a late pass.

Rest of the class to write their inference down about why the student who is limping is late?

Pick a few students to read out their inferences.

For example:

I infer_________ was running for the bus and he tripped and sprained his ankle.

________ missed the bus and then had to catch the next bus. I infer this scenario happened because ___________ was limping and he handed in a late pass.

Explicit Teaching:

An inference is a smart guess we make based on what the text says and what we already know.

explicit teaching

Read the following poem to students:

The Land of Nod

From breakfast on through all the day

At home among my friends I stay,

But every night I go abroad

Afar into the land of Nod.

All by myself I have to go,

With none to tell me what to do —

All alone beside the streams

And up the mountain-sides of dreams.

The strangest things are there for me,

Both things to eat and things to see,

And many frightening sights abroad

Till morning in the land of Nod.

Try as I like to find the way,

I never can get back by day,

Nor can remember plain and clear

The curious music that I hear.

By Robert Louis Stevenson

The Land of Nod by Robert Louis Stevenson

Read once aloud with expression.

Then read a second time, asking students to follow along and underline words or phrases that stand out.

Make a chart about unfamiliar words, Like "nod" "abroad"

Discussion:
Ask guided questions to model inference-making:
- What kind of place is “The Land of Nod”? Is it real?

- What clues tell us that this is a dream world?

- Why do you think the poet chose the word “Nod”?

Model Inference Thinking:
Write on board:
- Clue: “From breakfast on through all the day”
- What I Know:
- Inference:

student task

Students to answer the following questions

- What can you infer about how the speaker feels about the Land of Nod?
- (remember to use the following sentence stems)
- I infer the speaker feels__________________________ about The land of nod, because the text says________________________________ and I know_________________________________________________________.
- Why do you think the Land of Nod is only visited at night?
- What kind of adventures does the speaker imagine?
- Can you make any connections with the poem? If yes what are they?
- Why do you think the speaker says that he can not clearly remember the music that he hears?

Wrap-Up (5–10 minutes)

Share a few inferences aloud.
Reinforce the idea that good readers read between the lines.
Recap: What is an inference? How did we use the poem to make them?

Optional Extension Activities

Students write their own short poem about a dream world and invite classmates to infer meaning.
Visual Art: Illustrate the Land of Nod based on their inferences.

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