Here's a Quick Way to Get Your Students Using Clues to Make Inferences

I am so thankful for the three day weekend we earned after two long nights of parent/teacher conferences last week.  I'm thankful because this gift of time enabled me to finish my 'Thankful for Clues" Inference Pack to help my students practice referring to details and examples to support their inferences. 

We've been immersed in inferring for a few weeks, and I'm finally starting to see some growth as my readers deepen their inferring skills and verbalize their inferences. 

However, my kiddos are struggling with supporting those inferences with evidence from the text. 

And we all know that Common Core Reading Literature Standard 1 in fourth, fifth, and sixth grades states that students must refer to details and examples from the text when drawing inferences.  So, in honor of Thanksgiving, we are being "Thankful for Clues."

With our just right independent reading books, we will spend the whole week practicing citing the clues that led to our inferences.

We began today practicing with clues that show character traits.  Tomorrow we will practice with setting clues.  We'll continue on looking for clues to: character motivation, conflict, resolution, theme, and character change.  We'll wrap up our "Thankful for Clues"  practice by using all of our inferences to summarize the text.

I'm hoping that taking this time to explicitly practice citing evidence from the text will help my readers improve their weekly responses and metacognitive skills.  For that, I would be eternally Thankful!