A Strategy for Interpreting Text

This week as students in language groups practiced reading and making inferences, Mrs. DeYoung demonstrated how to use starter phrases to formulate a response. Students were directed to highlight a fact from the text and then generate a Therefore.... or This tells me that... statement to elaborate on what they had read and explain what they learned or interpreted from the passage. Younger children were encoouraged to predict what might happen next or discuss why events in the reading take place. When provided with a starter phrase that focuses on cause-effect relationships, the students were able make an appropriate inference and word their thoughts in a way that would make sense to their audience.