Drawing Conclusions

Learning to teach your students to draw conclusions doesn’t have to be difficult.

·      Assure your students that they are using this reading strategy every day.

·      Use imaginary situations or pictures to draw conclusions.

·      Point out to your students that they have reasons to support their conclusions.

·      Highlight the importance of having enough support for the conclusions.

Practice

Choose a short story (or a part of a story) that is easy for your students to read and understand. After the first reading, ask students to write down 3 or 4 of the most important facts. Next, tell them to share their thinking about each fact. Put the facts and their thinking together to collectively make conclusions. Finally, write what the students learned and how it can help them in life.

This table will help your students organize their thinking.

Knowledge Interpretation and Application
What do you see/read? Write down the facts.	What do you think about that? Make careful observations and thoughtful interpretations, draw inferences.	What is the author’s message? Draw conclusions.	What did you learn? What does it make you wonder? How can it help you in your life?

Raingsey practiced making conclusions.

Sovantey made interesting conclusions and connections.

More Practice

Teaching students to draw conclusions is essential in helping them understand how to read critically. 

Here are more activities that I selected from various sources. These activities for drawing conclusions will work for children at different grade levels. The more we practice with our students the better they become. Ideally, students should practice making conclusions every day during their reading activities.

- Conclusions from Movies

Students probably use the drawing conclusions strategy most often when they watch movies. Bring in a movie with an enjoyable scene that students can draw conclusions from (most movies will have a scene like this). Let students watch the movie and then work in groups to draw one or more conclusions from what they’ve watched. Encourage them to fill out a graphic organizer about one of their conclusions and emphasize the importance of basing their conclusion on facts from the movie.

- Conclusions from Texts

Choose a text that you’ve already discussed to make this process easier for students the first time. Help them to use the graphic organizers to draw conclusions from the text. When they are successful, encourage them to use the same process to draw conclusions from an unfamiliar text.

- Guess the Emotion

Divide the class into groups and give each group an index card with an emotion written on it. Instruct each group to come up with several “hints" that would describe a person who is feeling that emotion. For example, the group that has the emotion “angry" might list “red-faced" and “fists clenched" as two of the hints.

Then have groups pair up and trade hints to see whether they can draw conclusions about how the person feels based on the given hints. This is a great drawing conclusion activity to teach students how to draw conclusions about characters in texts they are reading.

- You Are What You Bring

Tell the class that you will be describing the contents of someone’s bag, as well as what the bag looks like.

Explain that it will be their job to draw conclusions about the person based on what you say is in the person’s bag. You might describe a tiny pink purse lined with sequins and feathers with a tube of lipstick and a hand mirror, a bulky gym bag with a sweatband and a set of hand weights, or a knapsack filled with library books about Abraham Lincoln.

After you’ve given them several examples, let them break into groups and come up with bags of their own.

Encourage them to trade their descriptions with other groups and see whether the second group draws the same conclusions that the first group had in mind. Then discuss whether any of their conclusions lacked enough support to be probable.

- Pictures

For students who are having trouble drawing conclusions from texts, it can be helpful to give them a different medium with which to practice this skill.

Find some interesting pictures, either online or in some old photo albums, and ask students to draw conclusions based on what is happening in the pictures.

They might draw conclusions about the relationships of the people in the pictures, the emotions that each person in the picture feels, or the setting in which the picture takes place.

Then explain that reading a story is like seeing a snapshot in time, and that drawing conclusions about the picture the author presents us in the story can help us to better understand the story, just like drawing conclusions about the picture helped us better understand what was happening in the picture.

These drawing conclusions activities are the perfect way to engage your students and help them to practice this important reading strategy.

- Using a Graphic Organizer

Draw a graphic organizer on the board consisting of several squares connected with arrows to a larger rectangle. (You may want to place the rectangle above the squares to show that the information in the squares “supports" the conclusion.) Explain to students that in order to draw a conclusion (point to the rectangle), you need to make sure to have plenty of support (point to the squares).  

In Class EAL Support

As our students continue to practice their Daily 5 routines they have to improve various transdisciplinary skills. In Mr.James's classroom this week we talked about social skills and how to be a good reading partner. In Miss Anita's classroom our students are more aware now of the noise level as they know from experience that it is much harder to focus on your reading when people are loud around. The metacognition bookmarks with sentence starters help our students to remain focused on their reading and develop their thinking skills. All the children know that they can spend only a certain amount of time on each routine before the timer goes, and this helps them to improve their self-management skills and be more time-conscious. 

With greater awareness of how they acquire knowledge, students learn to regulate their behavior to make better choices and optimize learning. They begin to see how their strengths and weaknesses affect how they perform. 

Shintaro and Daylin are reading partners.

It is important to reflect on how our students perform during the Daily 5 activities to be able to highlight the successes and mistakes that were made. Such brief discussions guide our students and show them the various ways to independent learning.

Mr. James leads a reflection session after one of the Daily 5 activities.

In Miss Lisa's classroom the students began to construct their understanding of explanation texts. Working in small collaborative groups gave our students an opportunity to share their thinking with more confidence and get support from their peers and/or the teacher.

Meyher was able to find the correct passage and answer the questions. 

During the "I Wonder" session the children were able to continue following their passions and learn more about the chosen topics. In the end of the "I Wonder" time my students had to create a short guided reflection, using sentence starters as a scaffold to structure their written piece.

Using sentence starters made it easier for Yuzuka and Meyher to sum up their learning during the session.

ASSESSMENT

Recently I practiced using the ARTFUL THINKING MATRIX for the formative assessment of my students' reading comprehension skills as well as critical thinking skills. 

Reasoning is a thinking disposition that we continue to develop in Grade 3. Using routines like "WHAT MAKES YOU SAY THAT?" gives my students an opportunity to describe what they see, think or know and begin to provide some textual or graphic evidence.

Questioning and investigating is another thinking disposition that propels the process of inquiry. Routines like "I Noticed, I WONDER", "CREATIVE QUESTIONS" and "SEE, THINK, WONDER" support my students in developing good questions and making connections to their prior knowledge. My students began to interpret, determine the importance of events as well as distinguish between observations and interpretations.

The above mentioned routines trigger a discussion with students, during which I can see the growth and improvement of my students' thinking skills. It also is a good indication of which students are behind and what kind of support is needed. 

Analyzing the outcomes of the VTRs drives my planning and guides me in my attempts to meet the learning needs of my students the best way.

ASSESSMENT

Conferring

“Conferring with students is formative assessment at its best.” Kath Murdoch (“The Power of Inquiry 2015)

 

Being led by Kath Murdoch’s idea that conferring is inquiring into students’ learning, I decided to allocate time for a fortnightly conferring session and turn it into a routine.

My students change their home reading books in my EFL class 3 times a week.  It gives me a chance to discuss the books, their reading goals, and strategies.

At least once in a fortnight, I make sure I confer with each of my EAL students to find out more about their learning, where they are at and give them feedback and guidance.

We discuss how they feel about their reading progress, how they are moving towards their goals, what next steps they have to take to improve their skills.  This opportunity to confer with each child helps me to meet their individual language needs better.

It also supports my professional growth as an educator.  In order to make my conferring with students more deliberate and structured, I have to improve my questioning skills. Conferring has influenced my planning tremendously as I am able to differentiate better based on the individual students’ needs. 

Conferring helps the teacher to understand the students better, find out more about their learning styles and provides a lot of information for report writing and liaising with parents.

My conversations with parents become more meaningful and the exchange of strategies more productive. During such conversation an educator has the opportunity to learn about family literacy practices or the lack of them, discuss goals and expectations in child development, and last but not least upgrade the rapport with parents.

EAL In Class Support 

In Miss Anita's and Mr. James's rooms the students enthusiastically follow the Daily Five routines. If any parents want to learn more about the Daily Five routines and support their children at home they can find some useful information here. 

This week I supported our EAL students in their word work and helped them to research the chosen words and make sentences with them. At times I wore the hat of a reading partner, modeled engaged and respectful listening and questioning strategies. I also had a chance to confer with my Full Support EAL students. I listened to their reading and asked them what they thought about their reading skills, their strengths, and challenges. I provided immediate feedback. My students talked to me about their reading goals and we discussed the best next steps for each child. These sessions provided a lot of information for my assessment and planning and helped me to meet the language needs of my students better.

Listening to reading is a very popular task.

During our math time, the Grade 3 students investigated what a kilogram is. The task was to fill three plastic bags with rice. (100g, 500g and 1kg).  Everybody had lots of fun, some rice was spilled, some students learned how to read the scales and finally, the three bags were full.

Gunn really enjoyed the activity.

Shintaro was very precise in his estimation of what one kilogram of rice would look and weigh like.

In all Grade 3 classrooms, the students were busy completing the summative assessment of the unit of inquiry. In Miss Lisa's room the presentations were very successful and the audience learned a lot of interesting facts about various biomes and animal and plant adaptation.

Yuzuka practiced hard and her presentation was one of the best.

In my EFL class,  I chose for my students to complete comprehension tasks about biomes and animal and plant adaptation to provide more information for my students and support them in their research for the summative assessment.

Independent work on comprehension tasks during the EFL class

On Friday I also found time to confer with my students about their home reading programme and all 9 individual conferences went very well and were very productive.

I complemented Raymond on his book choice and we also discussed some useful reading strategies that Raymond should use.

In Class EAL Support Grade 3

Miss Anita's students and Mr. James's students continued to learn about the 5 daily routines that help them develop their reading and writing skills. Every day our students have to:

• Read to self;
• Read to someone;
• Do some word work;
• Listen to reading;
• Work on their writing. 

Our English language learners are engaged in the same routines and their favourite is listening to reading. I usually support them during their word work and writing time. Often my students choose to practice reading with me first before they read with one of their friends. 

Shintaro is reading to himself.

Lucas and Shintaro are reading to each other and Miss Mom monitors the routine.

Gunn is listening to reading.

In Miss Anita's  and Miss Lisa's classrooms our students created beautiful poems, using metaphors and similes. We revised what a simile and what a metaphor was and created a shared poem for students to use as a model. Next, the children were given time to create their own poems independently and finally we had a sharing session on the carpet. Lots of our students were proud of their poems and had an intention to publish them on their blogs.

Miss Lisa's students enjoyed sharing their poems.

Miss Lisa's students revised their unit vocabulary and practiced various spelling strategies.

Constanza, Yuzuka and Shawn worked together to improve their spelling skills.

Mr. James's EAL beginners played a lot of various spelling games and their favorite was Bingo with sight words.

Gunn id the winner!!!

English As a Foreign Language Class Grade 3 

During our EFL classes, my Grade 3 students were engaged in a collaborative activity.  The children had to read a book Earth's Water, choose a topic they wanted to focus on (eg. Uses of Water, Water Pollution, etc) and create a poster in a small group of 3 students. 
While working on the posters my students were involved in meaningful discussions about the new facts they learned from the book. They also argued about which photos to use, asked and answered numerous questions. It was exciting to observe their choice of strategies and to hear the academic language of the unit in use.

Meyher consulted with Miss Boramey while creating a poster.

Helmi, Daylin and Irrham created a great poster about how people use water.

Daylin, Helmi and Irrham are presenting

When the posters were done, my students presented them to the whole group. 

Yuzuka and Lucas being real risk-takers!! Yuzuka spoke up!! They talked about the importance of water.

Edwin, Takuto and Janora talked about water pollution.

Gunn and Shintaro talked about the various states of water.

Grade 3 English as a Foreign Language Class

Recently my Grade 3 English language learners practiced reading comprehension strategies. We read about our favorite characters Henry and Mudge and also about Frog and Toad.  We learned how to write summaries, discussed how to make deep connections and tried to analyze what caused the problem in the story. 

Constanza is thinking about deep and surface connections.

Miss Mom supported Yuzuka, Shintaro, Gunn and Lucas to make different types of connections.

One of our learning intentions this week was to construct understanding about the water cycle. Our success criteria were to learn and be able to explain the words: EVAPORATION, CONDENSATION, PRECIPITATION and COLLECTION.  We watched several educational videos about the water cycle and also had to complete a labeling activity. Several confident thinkers in my class offered their one-sentence explanation of the words in focus. I put the best sentences on the board for the rest of the group to use. Next week we will continue to develop our understanding.

Miss Boramey supported the discussion about the water cycle at the girls' table.

Grade 3 In Class EAL Support

In Miss Lisa's and Mr. James' classrooms we do a lot of work with our English language learners. A great opportunity to practice using the academic language of our Water unit was when the kids had to share facts about water with their partners. 

Shintaro confidently shared his fact with his partner.

Maths time

Our big challenge last week was to create a mini-book about water with Mr.James' beginner students.

Lucas, Gunn and Shintaro read several easy books about water to collect information. We also made meaningful connections to the boys' background knowledge. As a result, our students created amazing books and were proud to present the reading that you can see below.





















In Miss Lisa's classroom we read a book "The Force of Water" and had a discussion about the features of the non-fiction book and the amazing facts that we learned from it. Our learning intention was to expand our collection of facts about water. We also worked hard with a small group of students to improve their spelling skills.

Our spelling class is fun!!

While the rest of the Grade 3 students were busy with the ISA test, EAL beginners from Miss Lisa's and Mr. James' classes enjoyed additional English language classes. We read and innovated stories, practiced some spelling strategies, asked and answered questions and of course played language games.

Yuzuka won our memory game!