Reading Strategies Continued!

I've missed blogging about the reading strategies we've been learning to use so this is a catch up post! I'll try not to be to long winded!! Over the past couple of weeks we have learned about inferring, comparing and contrasting, and cause/effect relationships. So here's how we've done it.......

Making Inferences about a pair of shoes (adapted from Comprehension Connections: Bridges to Strategic Reading by Tanny McGregor)

 I put this picture of a pair of shoes on the middle of our anchor chart and we talked about we thought about the shoe, at the bottom you can see how we summed up our inference "they belong to a kid who played outside alot" and our evidence that made us think this "they are old and ripped up.

We created the next chart as we read our guided reading books making inferences and discussing the evidence we found to support our thinking...I know it's not pretty I was running behind and forgot to make the chart before we started, the 2 colors represent the 2 different groups that read the same book and made inferences that day.

and here's the graphic organizer we used the following day when reading in pairs.......

Then we played charades and made inferences about what each person was! The kids loved this activity! We ended with them writing a paragraph about a person, place, or thing giving us at least three clues. We read them aloud and tried to infer what object they were talking about!

My 2nd graders are working on comparing and contrasting! We started out comparing our selves, each student was paired with another and they wrote down three ways they were alike and three ways they were different on sticky notes, we used Hula Hoops as a Venn Diagram and each pair shared their similarities and differences with the class. Then we read and compared these 2 stories...

We read each story, sequencing events in the pocket chart, then I layed out the hula hoops to form a Venn Digram, we placed the sequence cards in each hoop and then added our own things that were the same and different. The students filled in a graphic organizer to show their understanding. Here are the pocket chart cards and the graphic organizer.



We compared these two stories next...

 

The kids love these stories and they are great for comparing and contrasting, we used a simple venn diagram 

Finally we compared two very similar animals......

We read these two short books and then watched a couple of great video clips on YouTube about each bear, then again used our Venn Diagram to compare and contrast them!

I know this post in kind of long, hope it's helpful, I am going to share our cause effect lessons tomorrow so make sure to check back! Hope your having a wonderful First Week of October!!!