Inferring Word Meaning: Small Group
At a Glance
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GRADE LEVEL:
Grade 5 (Intermediate)
INSTRUCTOR:
Clare Landrigan
VIDEO LENGTH:
4:24
RELATED TEXT:
Book Matchmaker: Teaching Inferring to Intermediate Students
by Franki Sibberson
RELATED TOPICS:
demonstration; mentor texts; reading strategies
COMMON CORE CONNECTIONS:
RF.5.4. Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.
Video
Summary
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While demonstrating this lesson in front of
teachers, Clare Landrigan uses the
students’ previous work with inferring
about author’s message to have them infer
with unknown words they encounter in
text.
Discussion Questions
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How do you talk about inferring word
meaning with your students?
How did the word “tandoor” in the book
Ziba Came on a Boat by Liz Lofthouse give
the students an opportunity to apply their
inferring skills?
Clare paraphrases after each student shares
like “So you used the setting to help you?”
How else does she make this strategy
explicit?
Inferring Word Meaning: Small Group
Planning for Professional Development
10 min
Welcome participants and post the four skills below. In a 2008 report for the National
Foundation for Educational Research, the research evidence reviewed suggested that
in order to be skilled at inferring, students need to:
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be an active reader who wants to make sense of the text
monitor comprehension and repair misunderstandings
have a rich vocabulary
have a competent working memory
Have participants choose one or two students for whom inferring isn’t automatic yet
and discuss which of those four skills is the biggest obstacle.
10 min
The study goes on to say that it’s important for teachers to “take care not to
choose texts that are too easy for classwork: very explicit texts provide few
opportunities for inferences to be made.” Hand out copies of Franki Sibberson’s Book
Matchmaker: Teaching Inferring to Intermediate Students to discuss more mentor texts
that support inferring word meaning.
10 min
View the video, and then discuss using the focus questions:
5 min
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How do you talk about inferring word meaning with your students?
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How did the word ‘tandoor’ in the book Ziba Came on a Boat by Liz Lofthouse
give the students an opportunity to apply their inferring skills?
‣
Clare paraphrases after each student shares like “So you used the setting to
help you?” How else does she make this strategy explicit?
Have each participant craft a “text and task” action plan for whole-group, small-group
or individual conferring. For example: I will use the text Gumption with Andrea,
Bailey, Tre and Wynn with the task of charting how their understanding of word
changes over time.
Total Time: 35 minutes
Book Matchmaker: Teaching Inferring to Intermediate
Students
by Franki Sibberson
One of the big goals I have in any inferring unit is for students to be able to support their thinking
with evidence. I want to give them lots of practice going back into the book or text to support
their thinking, and I want them to get comfortable finding exact points in the book that support
their inferences. To meet this goal, I like to start with wordless picture books, or picture books
with very few words. These books allow for a great deal of talk, and they help all students to
enter the conversation no matter what their reading level. By learning to support thinking with
evidence from illustrations, students become comfortable going back to a certain page, or looking
for more clues within an illustration.
Inferring Word Meaning
I think an inferring unit is a great place to talk about word meanings. I like to introduce the unit
with a book like Gumption! by Elise Broach. The title of the book is Gumption! and the
illustration on the front is a boy in a jungle. Every group I have read this book to predicts that
gumption means a jungle from the front cover. Just as with any inferring exercise, I want readers
to support their inferences with evidence from the text or pictures. As the author of this book uses
the word gumption over and over, readers change their thinking based on new information, or the
ways in which they synthesize all of the ways the word has been used.
Baloney by Jon Scieszka is another fun title for inferring word meaning. This story is about an
alien who speaks in a language readers do not understand. But he uses many words in the context
of a sentence that readers can understand. The text, sentence structure, and illustrations help the
readers predict the meanings of the unknown words.
I want students to go beyond the literal meaning of words in their reading. I want them to think
about words with multiple meanings and bigger concepts. The Table Where Rich People Sit by
Byrd Baylor is the story of a little girl who has a chat with her parents because she doesn't think
they are rich enough. She wants them to make more money. They explain to her that they are rich
in ways other than money. The meaning of rich is defined differently for different people.
Students are able to infer this, and its role in the theme of the story after a few readings.
Sophisticated Picture Books
As students become more skilled at inferring, I want to give them more sophisticated books. I find
that I need to wait until we have a lot of practice with inferring and supporting thinking with
evidence before we move to more sophisticated texts. Otherwise, the inferring is not accessible to
the students, and they begin to do more guessing than inferring.
Two of my favorite picture books that require more sophisticated inferring are Heart and the Bottle
by Oliver Jeffers. In this book, a little girl is grieving and decides that the safest place for her heart
is a bottle. She goes on her daily life with her heart in a bottle, until someone needs her and she
begins to heal. This is a multilayered story about grief with lots to think about in both the
illustrations and the words. Emma’s Rug by Allen Say is about a little girl who is a natural artist. It
is a story of creativity. As with all of Allen Say's books, there is much that the author doesn't tell
you. Readers will need to read or hear this one several times to think about all that the author is
trying to say.