I'm Baaaack! + Making Inferences

So, for a number of reasons, I took a two-week social media hiatus exactly two weeks ago--best two weeks of my life!! Well, not the best actually, haha, but I did learn a lot:

• It is possible to let go of social media.
• Not checking Facebook and Instagram every five minutes actually WON'T kill me.
• However, if you abandon social media, you WILL find something else to fill the void...like online shopping. :/ :P :) (not a good idea!)
• And along the same lines, no FB or IG = MORE texting. That counts as building relationships, right???
• My phone battery lasts WAY longer when it isn't dinging with notifications all day long! I left school one day last week with 96% battery--what!!! :O
• The Bible has much more interesting stories than Facebook.
• Planning a four-year-old's birthday party is LESS stressful when you have more time to focus on it!

As you can see, I had a lot of realizations! ;) I am grateful for the experience and will be definitely be doing it again every now and then!

Now, on to my classroom happenings--

Yesterday, I introduced our month-long penguins unit with a little inferencing activity. After that activity, we filled up this little guy with schema about penguins:

The aforementioned inferencing activity went pretty well, but most just weren't exactly sure what making an inference meant! They were having a hard time communicating their conclusions. Thankfully, I already had another inferencing activity for science lined up...

Tuesday afternoon for my class means computer lab time--yay! This means that I get a solid 30 minutes of alone time in my classroom right before the last hour of the school day. :) This time was PERFECT for setting up Case #235B: The Mystery Visitor.

Right before I brought my students back into the classroom after computer lab, I told them that someone came by to visit while they were gone. The person that came by had to hurry out and forgot to put his materials away! In order to figure out WHO came by, the students had to study the clues and make an inference about who the mystery visitor was.

He left his very stylish IKEA umbrella open on the floor. Tsk tsk.

Weather books strewn all over the floor. Clearly, this person is not a teacher.

Some tools on the back table.....

And this map was left up on the Promethean board.

Who could it be??!! My Super Sleuths got right to work studying the clues and recorded the clues and inferences made on this sheet.

They ate up this activity. As you can see, they did a FAB job! Now, as they understand making inferences more and more, we will write more in our sentences. For now, this is super.

Grab a copy of this recording sheet to use in your classroom by clicking below! You will also see one without "Who has been in our classroom?" so you are able to use it for other inferencing activities.

Thanks for coming by! Enjoy your freebie!! :)