Inference and Synthesizing

You might want to consider new ways of making your anchor charts and documentation interactive for your students. We are currently reading the novel, Ghost Hawk, for our interactive read aloud. For this novel we are also working on improving our ability to infer text information and sythesize an idea.  We are using the Smekens silhoutte approach to serve as a graphic organizer.

After reading sections of the book, I am giving the students a key question related to the book.  We are working together on using the organizer to prepare our thinking. The students view the question, create an organizer in their notebooks, and put down ideas alone for three minutes.  After the students have had time, we are sharing our ideas together. Currently, I have been modeling the thinking they are sharing on the whiteboard when we work as a group.  Students can add to their notebooks the collected ideas.

Next, we are thinking of a way to synthesize the ideas around the head.  Often we take the question and use it to guide our topic.  This process will help readers to prepare to write about the questions with key evidence from the text, which is a standard we are focusing on along with sythesizing.

Working to make a documentation record of our work throughout the novel, I have been taking pictures of our whiteboard and adding the images to a SMORE for Ghost Hawk. On the SMORE, I have been able to model taking the graphic organizer work and turning it into written response.  This way, students can see the next steps they will be taking after they are comfortable with using the organizer.

In the image , you can see that some of the pages of this SMORE were printed to be available as a reminder of the work we have done in the modeling stage. A QR code can also be added so that the entire collection of examples can be available to the student. Make your documentation and anchor charts interactive so they are valuable to the students.

As we go through the process, students will be able to revisit our steps as they transition to doing the process independently.  All of these strategies continue to make learning visible which brings UDL guidelines into the classroom too.

Take a Look at our SMORE collection as we go through the novel.