Cherry Blossom Candy Leaf

I have been teaching my kids about making inferences while they read. They know how to make inferences, but the concept itself is really difficult for them to understand. Inferring is when you use context clues and your own experiences and knowledge to understand what an author is trying to say even if it is not said explicitly. For example, in the following sentences: "Zelda and I won two tickets to Splash World. We couldn't wait to go down the water slides and soak in the pool." Students can infer that Splash World is a water park because of the clues "water slides" and "pool", that tickets are required and that Splash World is a proper noun, even though none of them have ever been to a Splash World.

I don't know exactly why I want them to recognize that they infer. It's just important that they do. I want them to see the reading skills they have that they didn't know they had. In addition, you infer in all subject areas, which leads me to my next story.

I was trying to demonstrate that scientists infer all the time because the scientific world is filled with unknowns... just think of the ocean or space and how little is really known about either. So I decided to do an experiment where students would have to infer. I put three items that the students could not see into containers. I chose toothpicks, salt, and grapes. We felt the items, wrote a description and inferred what the items were, even though we could not see them.

They recognized the toothpicks right away and everyone predicted that that's what they were. I showed them and they began to understand making inferences. Next we did the salt. The interesting thing (or maybe not to anyone but me) is that the salt was uncertain like some results found in scientifc studies. The class predicted it was salt, sugar, sand, fun dip, etc., After the experiment, I told them it was salt, but I did not show them. Finally I passed around the wet grapes and as the students felt the wet blobs, they pulled their hands out in disgust. They predicted that the container was full of olives, the world's smallest eggs, and grapes, to name a few.

At this point they were riled up and due to the wind this week, they have been crazy every day. I decided to get my revenge. I started to put all my mystery containers away and as I did so, they all begged for the answer. What were the interesting items in the container? That's when I nonchalantly stated that they were cow eyeballs. They began to gag into their hands and the horror on their faces was priceless. And much like Lard-Ass in Stand By Me , I just "sat back and watched what I had created."

Then the dismissal bell rang, and I sent them home to torture their parents.