Maggie McMurry

CIED 3253

09/17/2015

Targeted Literacy Strategy or Skill: Inferring

Grade level: 2nd Grade
Objective: The students will be able to understand their own feelings by learning and understanding
inferential thinking.
Common Core State Standard/PASS Standard: RF. 2.4a , RL. 2.1, Rl.2.3
Prior knowledge: (What students already know)
Students know what emotions/feelings are.

Observations/Rationale: (Before Lesson) What did you notice in your students work that let you
know this lesson was necessary?
I noticed that my students do not have very good understanding of their feelings or how to infer others
feelings and emotions

Materials Needed: A feeling chart and note cards

Lesson from Mentor Text: Strategies That Work, pp. 138-139
Mentor Text: N/A
Materials: Note cards
Student Groups (whole/small group/partners): Whole group
Mini Lesson Format:

Connect (Engagement):
Gather the class on the rug. Once the students are rounded up, begin by making a face that shows
an emotion. Can anyone tell me how Im feeling right now? My face shows that I am feeling
very sad. Its very important to understand our own, as well as other peoples feelings. Today we
are going to learn about inferential thinking. Inferring is about being able to read other peoples
body language, expressions, faces, and tone of voice. Were going to make a feelings chart to help
us! Ill give you each the chance to explore feelings during this lesson.

Teach (Model/Explain):
I am going to start by choosing a card that says happy from the chart and act it out. Now, I will
choose a card and act it out, then you will try and guess what Im feeling. Act it out. How was I
feeling? Very good! How could you tell? Thats right! Its important to build an understanding of

how to infer different emotions because inferring is the foundation to comprehension. It is also
important to learning. To learn something you must understand, or comprehend it. It also helps you
learn to read the world, as well as text. Now I am going to introduce a new emotion and write it
on a card, this will be added to our feelings chart. This is the feeling angry. You feel this way
when you are upset or mad about something. For example, if someone stole my book, I would
probably be angry and look like this. Review each emotion on the chart and write them on index
cards.

Active Engagement (student(s) try it out): Now I am going to choose one student to wear this
card on their back. They wont know which emotion it is; everyone else has to give them hints and
clues about the feeling on the card. I want everyone to sit around the perimeter of the rug and the
volunteer turn around so that each student can see the card on his/her back. I will give 6 of you the
opportunity to give a hint and then we will ask the volunteer if they can infer what the feeling is
and how they know. Lets try it out!

Link/Closure (Articulating the expectation that students will now use this skill/strategy when
reading or writing):
Today we learned how to infer feelings by acting out different emotions and guessing them. Now
I would like you to choose a book from this stack, read it, and then write about how the main
character was feeling. Make sure to explain how you can tell.