Day One:

On day one I begin by having students create an Interactive Notebook page in their reading notebooks. They will use this as a guide throughout the week! I use THIS one.

Tips for interactive notebook: It always takes WAY TOO long for coloring and cutting. I have to set a timer for my kiddos. I’ll usually put about 7 minutes up. They know at 2 minutes, they should be cutting, and at 1 minute they should be glueing.

We also watch the Flocabulary video on inferencing. I always stop the video as we go and ask the students questions and have them make inferences along the way.

We ended our lesson with exit tickets. I like to make quick google form quizzes with task cards I’ve purchased from TPT! Today I used these for todays lesson. For more information about how I use exit tickets, click HERE.

This afternoon I also gave these Mystery Mail envelopes and letters to staff members at our school! They will be writing an anonymous letter to our class, and will be sending three items that represent themselves with the letter. I chose to give them to the art teacher, librarian, assistant principal, computer teacher, and lunch lady. I thought that each one of these staff members would have at least one item that we could make some really GOOD inferences about! I set this up this morning (below), so now we are just waiting to receive our letters and infer who wrote each one!

Day Two:

Today we started our lesson by viewing the Inferencing Flocabulary video again. I also pulled up the exit tickets from the previous day and we went over each answer as a class.

Next, students made inferences about ME based off of what was in my “teacher bag!” I preloaded my bag with good items like keys, coffee cup, Chickfila bag, Paci, and planner. As I pulled each item out of my bag we talked about what we inferred about Mrs. Neal based on those items. I tried to get them to think ~~deep~~. For example, for the keys: Mrs. Neal has a car (obvious answer), but she also has a drivers license (deeper answer), she is at least 16 years old (even deeper answer). You can find a lesson guide and more by click HERE. These are the items I used:

Finally students got to work independently by creating a “What’s in my Backpack?” page (also included in the link above). They were to draw at least 3-4 items that represents them in their backpack. I had to remind my students that we are not drawing what is actually in our backpack…..we are drawing items that represent US….these items can be anything. Some of my students chose to draw items like a binder or a pencil pouch. In the future, I want to stress the importance of choosing better items! If someone were looking at our “backpack” we WANT them to be able to figure out who we are (what sport do you play, do you have any pets, do you cheer for a specific sports team, etc). I must add that we did NOT fill out our name or the bottom portion of the backpack drawing page until the very end! We made sure to spread out around the room while working on these, so that no-one saw other papers! I collected each one, mixed them up, and placed each page on a desk. Students became detectives and visited each backpack. They made a list of items in the backpack, inferred what each item meant or represented, and then inferred which classmate the backpack belonged to! This is the sheet they used to investigate each others backpack:

We ended our lesson with 3 exit tickets again, using google forms and google classroom!

Day Three

Once again, we started our lesson with our Flocabulary video (by this day my students have memorized most of the words and have a little more fun with it!)

Today we got some MYSTERY MAIL (remember I told you I sent info to staff members around the school at the beginning of the week!!) We made inferences about the clues FIRST and then read the letter. Take a look:

Next, I had students will fill out their Fingerprint Analysis. WE WILL USE THESE FINGERPRINTS ON DAY FIVE for a CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION!! Students receive a fingerprint. They will record information about themselves being as detailed as possible (examples: I love Alabama football, my favorite book is Last Kids on Earth, I have a dog named Sofia, I have a 1 year old brother, etc). We will use these later in the week! I will end up choosing ONE fingerprint and finding an item that represents each detail (example: a shaker for being an Alabama fan, a zombie drawing for the last kids on earth book, a stuffed animal or leash for having a dog, baby food for having a baby brother.) These items will be placed in a crime scene later in the week! Students will decide WHOSE FINGERPRINT “MATCHES” the crime scene!

ONCE AGAIN, we complete 3 task cards in google classroom for an exit ticket!

Day Four

We received another piece of Mystery Mail today!! They were so excited about yesterdays…they kept asking me if we were going to be receiving anymore!!

Day Five

You can find a more detailed explanation of this lesson by clicking HERE.

Students fill out their own fingerprint. Each students is a suspect in the case of the missing _________. They are analyzing “fingerprints” to see which one “matches” the crime scene.
Choose one fingerprint to create a crime scene around.
Make the crime scene
Copy finger prints. This year I am choosing to copy a set of fingerprints for each group. I will save paper by printing 4 on one page! I won’t do front and back because I want them to be able to sort the fingerprints and look at them all at the same time. I have 18 students so I will split my students into 6 groups of 3! (I always choose partners due to minimize behavior problems and to ensure that personalities and abilities are set appropriately!)
Students view the crime scene and take notes. They will note each item.
They will meet as a group and make/record inferences about each item” “What does this piece of evidence say about the suspect?”
Next, students will work through each fingerprint. They will decide if the fingerprint matches the crime scene. They can sort them into to stacks: suspects, not suspects.
Students will then look back through their “suspects” list in order to narrow it down even further. They can highlight, mark through, etc. I remind students that EACH item in the crime scene must match to part of the fingerprint.
Each group must decide on ONE fingerprint as their PRIME suspect and be able to explain why they chose this person.