Inferences and the Sunday Funnies

Our reading comprehension strategy this week was making inferences.  This is a hard skill for students to master.  I decided to try a different strategy when teaching the skill.

First, we started talking about being in a fight with a friend - what do our friends do and or say to imply they are upset?  We listed characteristics of being in a fight with a friend.  After we brainstormed, we discussed the difference from a verbal cue and a nonverbal signal.  We examined our list and separated items into written/verbal and nonwritten/nonverbal (body language).

In class, we spent time discussing examples of text and nontext sources of signals or cues - we call it evidence - of what a person is implying.  We talked about pictures and videos and compared those sources with written text in stories and captions of photographs. 

After spending time building background through listing examples and making connections, we began our project of making inferences.  I selected a comic that was light on text.  I showed the comic strip under the document camera and we listed nonverbal cues for what the author could be implying.  After that, we read the text and connected the text to the picture.  We then listed inferences we could make based on nonverbal signals and evidence presented in the text.

In order to provide additional practice with support for students, I passed out a set of Sunday Funnies to partnerships of students.  I gave them a set time frame for selecting a comic and listed expectations for the assignment.  Partnerships were required to make an inference and support their ideas with evidence from the picture in the comic and the text in the comic.  Partnerships presented their inference, comic, and listing of evidence to support the inference to the class.