Embedded Files
Learning intention and success criteria
Learning intention and success criteria
Objective: Good readers are good thinkers. They make inferences when reading to help make sense of a poem and gain deeper understanding.
Learning Intention: WALT make inferences when reading a poem that does not involve rhyme and where the author uses poetical devices to engage the reader.
Success Criteria:
I can:
use text clues to support my inferences
explain what figurative devices the writer uses to make the poem interesting
look at the devices the writer uses to make the poem engaging
record my inferences
TRY MY BEST
inferring during reading
inferring during reading
Warm up:
Read the following passages, remind students that when they are making an inference they are using text clues and activating their prior knowledge to infer what is happening.
Scenario 1: The Missing Cookies
Scenario 1: The Missing Cookies
Maria came into the kitchen and saw crumbs on the floor and an empty cookie jar on the floor. Her little dog was nearby, sniffing the floor and licking up crumbs. When Maria asks, " Do you know who knocked the cookie jar onto the floor, Buster?" The dog wags his tail slowly and slinks away to his dog bed.
Question: What can you infer happened to the cookies?
➡️
🐶 Scenario 2: The hiding spot
🐶 Scenario 2: The hiding spot
Two friends are playing hide and seek, while the seeker is closing their eyes and counting down from 20, the hiding friend swaps hiding places three times.
Question: What can you infer about the person who is hiding?
➡️
🎒 Scenario 3: Forgotten chores
🎒 Scenario 3: Forgotten chores
When mother returns home from work she finds food on kitchen benches and dishes piled up. All the children are watching screens. She starts to bang cupboards and fridge door loudly. She shoves dirty plates and the knives and forks into the dishwasher.
Question: What can you infer about how the mother is feeling?
explicit teaching
explicit teaching
Explicit Teaching:
An inference is a smart guess we make based on what the text says and what we already know.
Introduction
Ask: Have you noticed the poems we have analysed so far have rhyming words at the end of lines?
Why do you think poets use rhyming words?
Illicit responses from students.
Today we are going to be looking at a poem that does not rhyme and we will discuss if it's still engaging and evocative for the reader?
Read the following poem
The Answers
Sitting outside the principal's office
While Mr Sinclair
phones my parents
a knot of shame
twists inside my stomach.
I wrote the cheat-notes.
faint as can be:
tiny little letters,
along the curve of my thumb.
Dad's gonna spit it.
Not to mention Mum.
I dig my fingernails,
deeper into my palm.
They don't know.
None of them knows
what it feels like
to never, ever
have the answers.
By Maxine Beneba Clarke
Students to read the poem in pairs. They are to highlight the lines or words that they found interesting and engaging.
Have a class discussion about their findings.
In their books students to rule up table
Text clues What I know/connection
a knot of shame twists in
my stomach
I infer the speaker is feeling
student task
student task
Students continue activating prior knowledge and using text clues to make inferences, in their Readers Notebook.
Remind students it is their own interpretation of the poem. There are no right or wrong inferences.
What they are doing is gaining a deeper understanding of the poem by making inferences.
Optional extension
Look at the title. Does the Title give the reader a clue as to what the poem is about?
Students to think about whether they have ever felt like the speaker in the poem.
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