Building Meaning through Inferencesand Summaries

June PreszlerWinner Elementary SchoolMarch 28, 2007

This Afternoon’s Plan

Refine our ideas regarding inferences Practice making inferences Consider ways to help our students

make logical inferences Define the strategy of summarization Practice writing summaries Consider applications for elementary

students

Making Meaning When we make inferences,

we…

Teaching Meaning When we teach inferences,

we…

Inference Test

A businessman had just turned off the lights in the store when a man appeared and demanded money. The owner opened a cash register. The contents of the cash register were scooped up and the man sped away. A member of the police force was notified.

William V. Haney Uncritical Inference Test

Fact or Inference?

Facts: Made after an observation, do not speculate or presume, close to certainty, can be proven

Inferences: Go beyond observations, speculative, degrees of probability

Billboard Inferences

On a billboard near Sturgis…

OUR BUFFET IS MORE FUN THAN POKER, ALICE

The Billboard Itself

Missed by Bev Doolittle

Details Inferences

Ghost of Grizzly Treeby Bev Doolittle

Guesses Reasons for Guesses

Solving the Mystery

Mysteries get reluctant students enthusiastic

Mysteries, with their intrigue, characters, and gradually revealed storyline, hold the students' interest.

Students use deductive reasoning and research skills to solve the mystery.

On the Web

Cathy concocted a plan to kill Ray, her drug-dealing husband. How did she get away with it?

http://www.mysterynet.com

Clue

Ray didn't use cocaine; he just sold it.

Clue

Cathy got Ray's customers to do the dirty work.

Clue

No one knew of Cathy's plan, and she was never caught.

Clue

Cathy bought a canister of talcum powder.

Solution

Cathy substituted a batch of cocaine with talcum powder. Ray's customers tested the purchase. A fight ensued and Ray was killed.

Questioning the Author

Each employee must wash his hands thoroughly with warm water and soap after each trip to the toilet and before beginning work.

Each employee must wash his hands thoroughly with warm water and soap after each trip to the

toilet and before beginning work.

What is the author trying to tell you?

Why is the author telling you that? Is it said clearly? How might the author have written

it more clearly? What would you have wanted to

say instead? From Reading Quest Strategies/Questioning the Author/www.readingquest.org

Vocabulary InferencesWord What We Infer It Means What Helped

UsRubbleNuzzlingSatchels

Mark with a C when thinking is confirmed. Mark with an X when the dictionary definition contradicts our own.

Teaching the Talk “Inferring is thinking in your head to help you

understand, when the story doesn’t let you in on it.” –Colin

“When we infer together it’s like a wire that connects from my head to someone else’s head, on and on and on, all around the circle.” –Riley

“Inferring is something I keep with me—wherever I go, it follows me around. I carry it with me to figure out things in my life.” –Frank

Camille’s Take on Inferences “I’m inferring my dog is really good at

it, like last night when I went to get his leash, he ran to the door! He was inferring I was going to take him for a walk. And whenever he hears the garage door opening, he starts jumping all around because he’s inferring my dad’s home.”

Kid quotes and Vocabulary inferences from Reading with Meaning by Debbie Miller

Classroom Tools

http://www.classroomtools.com/infer.htm

Summaries

June PreszlerWinner Elementary SchoolMarch 28, 2007

Summarizing When we summarize, we take larger

selections of text and reduce them to their bare essentials.

Bare essentials: the gist, the key, the main points worth remembering.

Marzano:

When working with struggling students, we need to understand that summarizing academic learning doesn’t come automatically. In fact, we need to provide students with a variety of approaches to use as students attempt to summarize.

Strategy Explanation Summarizing and note taking are identified

as two of the most useful academic skills for all students.

Summarizing and note taking are grouped together since both require students to distill and then synthesize.

Research on Summarizing• Students must delete, substitute and keep

information.• Students must analyze information at a

deep level of understanding.• Students must be aware of the information’s

structure in order to effectively summarize.

Marzano, et al: Classroom Instruction that Works, pages 30-32

What You Want Them to Do

Pull out main ideas Focus on key details Use key words and phrases Break down larger ideas Write only enough to convey the gist

What Students Usually Do

Write down everything Write down next to nothing Write way too much Don’t write enough Copy word for word

Teaching Summaries

Keep in mind—it’s not easyHard to learn/hard to teachModel repeatedlyGive students practice time

“Rule-Based” Strategy

Delete trivial material Delete redundant material Substitute broad terms for lists as in the

following example from Ruth Law Thrills a Nation: “She put on two woolen suits, one on top of the other. Then she put on two leather suits and covered her bulky outfit with a skirt.” Summary might be?

• Marzano, et al: Classroom Instruction that Works, pages 32-33

Summary Frames

Focus on structure Series of questions provided by

teachers to students Questions highlight critical elements

o Narrativeo Topic-Restriction-Illustrationo Definitiono Argumentationo Problem/Solutiono Conversation

o Marzaon, et al: Classroom Instruction that Works, pages 34-35

Narrative Frame

The story takes place in… The main characters are… A problem happens when… The problem is solved when… The story ends when…

Expository Framework

The main idea (or most important thing) is…

The first main point is… The second main point is… The third main point is The author wants us to know that…

Handy Helpers Read, Cover, Remember, Retell Hands Down: Hands Down allows students to

make use of their hands as tools to help them organize their thoughts or remember details. A student’s fingers become the framework for recording information. The strategy appeals to most students but is especially liked by kinesthetic learners. Hands Down can be used anytime you want students to focus on five basic elements of a lesson.

Create a sample hand. Label each thumb and finger with categorie. Display the sample and provide students with a handout or ask them to trace their own hands.

Hands Down Possibilities

Story Maps: Action, Problem, Character(s), Setting, Title

Five W’s: Who, What, Where, When, Why, Picture on Palm

Summary Paragraph: Main Idea, Supporting Detail, Supporting Detail, Supporting Detail, Concluding Statement

Quick Summaries Don’t Look Back 1 Sentence Paraphrase One-Word Summaries Refine and Reduce

Jones, Lawwill, Wormeli

Don’t Look Back

Provide students with a selection Ask students to take notes of

important details When students have finished, direct

them to turn over the paper and write what they remember…without looking back

Refine and Reduce

Have students write successively shorter summaries, constantly refining and reducing

Begin with half a page, then two paragraphs, then one paragraph, then two or three sentences, then a single sentence

Journalists’ Questions and the GIST

Who What When Where Why How

• 20-Word Summary

• Gardner, Jones, Gray

Sum It Up! Students imagine they are placing a

classified ad or sending a telegram. Each word costs 10 cents, and they can

spend "so much." For instance, if you say they have $2.00 to spend, then that means they have to write a summary that has no more than 20 words.

Adjust the amount they have to spend, and therefore the length of the summary, according to the text they are summarizing.

Pat Widdowson of Surry County Schools in North Carolina

It is often said that the heart is the hardest-working muscle of the body. It has to be. The primary job of the heart is to pump blood throughout the body, and to do this job, it must beat steadily from long before you are born until the time you die. The heart may slow down occasionally, but it never totally rests.

Did you know you have more than 90,000 miles of blood vessels throughout your body? And your blood must travel this entire 90,000-mile course more than one thousand times each day. Each time your heart beats, it pumps about two ounces of blood through your system. This adds up to more than a gallon of blood pumped per minute. If you exercise hard—if you run for instance, or swim or play football—your heart may work up to twice this hard. By getting into good condition, you can prepare your heart to pump more blood with less effort.

This has to do with the amount of oxygen your heart uses. A normal heart uses about three-fourths of all the oxygen your body takes in. Your other muscles use the rest. But as your heart grows stronger, from exercise, it requires less oxygen to pump the same amount of blood. This is why a person who is out of shape gets breathless going up one flight of stairs, while a person in good shape can run up a big hill and scarcely breathe hard.

Exit Card Summaries

• What did I learn today?