Below is one of the exercises that I used with my tutee. Over the semester, we read Bunnicula, and at the beginning, the 2 main characters were Chester and Harold, the Monroe family’s dog and cat. In order to introduce visualization and characterization. In order to do this, she picked a character and I did one as well and we drew what we thought they looked like and we wrote down what we know for sure about the character. As we continued reading, we added to this and talked about how what we thought about them either happened or didn’t happen. This was also a good activity to talk about author’s words because we drew what we thought the animals would look like based on the description and pictures in our heads from the author, but when we looked on the back of the book, there were pictures of Chester and Harold and they looked different than what we had pictured.
Below is a different activity where we focused on inferencing. We talked about what inferencing was and how it is taking evidence from the text and things that we already know to come to a conclusion about a situation. We had to discuss how it was different from a prediction, but she understood after we talked about them both. On this chart, however, there was a place for her to write her inferences in the middle, backed with things that she knew, her background knowledge, and the evidence from the text. This was our second day talking about inferences, so it was not perfect but by the next time I saw her, she was able to clearly describe what it was to me as well as the difference between inferencing and predictions!
Throughout our time reading Bunnicula, she utilized sticky notes to mark her predictions and inferences. However, I also stressed the importance of making sure that we understand what we are reading. Therefore, as a way for her to help monitor herself, I told her that she could use it to mark words or passages she doesn’t understand. This is 1 of only 3 that she ended up marking where she was confused, but she took responsibility for her understanding!
Similar to the post above, my tutee used these sticky notes to mark her predictions, inferences, and areas for clarification. When we talked about predictions, she knew what they were but was not 100% clear on exactly how that worked with comprehending the text. Before we started this chapter, we went through and looked at the title of the chapter and this one actually had a picture, so we used that to serve as a visual aide to show that they also help with predictions.
Below are 2 audio clips from a running record post assessment. Before reading this book, she mentioned that she had a prediction to make, which I thought was fantastic and pleasantly shocked that she was applying them! In the second audio clip, she is answer one of the comprehension questions at the end and is using inferencing to drive her understanding!