Calin Deck

Lesson Plan
13 October 2017
Special Education ELA Lesson Plan
Reading: Making Inferences
Background Information:
 Age/Domain: Grade 5
 Subject: Making Inferences
 Lesson Plan Type: Teacher-Directed Expository Teaching
 Text: An American Face
 Time: 30 minutes
Goal:
 Students will be able to quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says
explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
Rationale:
 In teaching students to make inferences, students will be able to connect something they
do in everyday life to reading. Making sound inferences based on both what a student
knows and the explicit text allows students to better understand different types of
literature. It also provides students with a context to assist students in decode challenging
words.
Objectives:
 After completing the lesson, students will be able to back up their thinking through the
use of explicit details from the story.
 After completing the lesson, the students will be able to identify the story details that
help to provide the reader with a deeper understanding of the story.
Curriculum Standard:
 CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.1
Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing
inferences from the text.
 CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.7
Analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text
(e.g., graphic novel, multimedia presentation of fiction, folktale, myth, poem).
Concepts we discuss:
 Social Studies GLCE
· 5 -- C5.5.1 The Meaning of Citizenship
· 5 -- C5.5.2 Becoming a Citizen
Teacher Preparation:
 Think about citizenship/ American (Include students’ thoughts before and after on the
whiteboard)
o What does an American look like?
 Create a graphic organizer for students to keep track of both the explicit text and inferred
meanings.
 Go through the story and take note of any possible inferences. This will help when doing
guided practice.
Vocabulary:
 Inference
 Citizenship/ American Face
 Foreign
 Adoption
Assessment Plans:
 Prior Knowledge:
o Students will come to class knowing first person, second person, and third person.
o Students will come to class knowing what it means to adopt (Train to
Somewhere)
 To assess what the students know I will start by asking what it means to be an American
citizen. We will use what the students know about being an American citizen to gain a
better understanding of what the word foreign means.
o If the students struggle to come up with something I will ask if they are American
citizens. This will help the students to generate ideas.
Note: I will do this activity once more at the end of the story to discuss what we have learned
about citizenship and American faces.
 Formative Assessment:
I will use a checklist to note which students are making inferences and supporting it with details
from the story. See attached.
 Exit Ticket:
Students will write on a sticky note a time in their life in which they had to infer. Provide a
personal example to get the students thinking.

 When the students came back from lunch their faces were green.
Teacher: What could this tell us about the students’ lunch?
 The students came in from recess dripping wet.
Materials:
 Photographs of home
 Graphic organizer
 Book: An American Face by Jan M. Czech
 Projector
 Chromebooks- To look up what it means to infer
o https://kids.wordsmyth.net/ (Kid friendly definitions)
Instructional Procedures:
Introduction and Review (3-5 Minutes):
 Using the photographs of Jonesville, I will ask the students to tell me what they know
about each of the three pictures. Keep a list of the observations on the whiteboard for all
of the students to see.
 Next provide time for the students to look up what it means to infer using
https://kids.wordsmyth.net/.
 After discussing what it means to infer, ask the students to make inferences based on the
observations they made when looking at the three photographs of Jonesville.
o Teacher: Inferring is not simply a guess, but using what is known to make an
educated guess based on what you see or know.
 o Explain to the students that inferring is something good readers do to help them
to better understand different types of texts. Inferring can also help the reader
when decoding challenging words.
Presentation/Develop Understanding (10 Minutes):
Explain New Procedures
 Teacher: We are going to read American Face. While reading be sure to listen for details
that tell us more about the characters. When reading you can learn more about characters
by what they think, say, and do.”
Guided Practice/ Comprehension Monitoring (10 Minutes):
 Begin reading An American Face. Be sure to point out specific details from the story and
the illustrator’s work that can tell us more about the story.
o As you read point out obvious inferences. Gradually allow students to share their
observations and inferences (by raising their hands).
o Pause on pages with multiple examples. Provide time for students to think before
moving forward.
 While reading be sure to guide student thinking.
o If the student infers that a character is sad, push them to look back at the text and
pinpoint the story detail that lets him or her know a character is sad.
Integration/ Closure
 Reiterate to the students the importance of inferring. Pass out sticky notes for students to
write a time in which they had to infer. Provide the students with one or two examples to
get them started. Be sure to walk around the room to assist those students who have
trouble writing.
 If time provides have students share what they have learned about what it means to be an
American citizen. Write this on the whiteboard for students to see how their
understanding of an American face/citizen has grown.
Differentiation:
Students will be working in a small group setting
The challenging text will be read out loud
I will be prodding students individually and facilitating student thinking, through prompting
Graphic organizers and pictures to help facilitate student understanding

To assist those who have trouble staying engaged, I am going to incorporate scheduled
movement breaks throughout the story.
 Students will be coming up to the whiteboard to highlight the explicit text
 I will ask students to do some of the things the main character does. For instance, on page
one I will have students draw a big x in the air when Jessie makes “a big red x through
the date...”
Story Details Inference
 Student: Notes:

Pre-reflection:
Inferring is something most children come by naturally. For instance, the other day a

student came in crying. The other students’ actions showed that they knew their classmate was

upset. First, they asked if she was alright. When they did not receive a response, they knew to

give her space. The student never had to explicitly say this to them, the students simply

understood. They might have known because they themselves have felt that same way or because

they have seen someone else act this way, but the students used what they observed and what

they knew to determine what the other student might have needed.

When planning this lesson, I knew that the students would come in knowing how to make

plausible inferences. However, they may not have known the term or even that they regularly

make inferences. The part of this lesson that I think the students might find difficult is not

inferring, but pinpointing the story details that support their inferences. To prepare for this I plan

to give an example of text that does not provide us with a deeper understanding, as well as a

sentence from the text that does. I have prepared a list of guiding questions to help the students

to identify the explicit text. For instance, if a student provides a sentence with limited meaning
behind it, I will ask whether that sentence makes the student think or feel. If it is not a clue that

expands our understanding of the story, then it is not a detail that will help us to gain a deeper

understanding of the story.

Post-Reflection:

In a resource room, students are constantly coming and going at different times. This

Friday all five students did not show up for 15 minutes. While I waited for the students to arrive,

I had some of the students who arrived on time work on their late work and complete our

everyday classroom tasks. The lesson was meant to last 25 to 30 minutes. In order to get through

the lesson, I had to keep the anticipatory set fairly short. I felt I made good use of what little time

we had. I brought the lesson to a close by asking students to write about a time in which they had

to infer. I was quite impressed by what some of the students had written. Four of the five

students were able to explain a time in which they inferred. The fifth student wrote about some

of the inferences we made as a class at the beginning of the lesson. I was proud of her response

because she used what little she did know about making inferences. When making inferences

about the book An American Face, she found it more challenging. I was happy to see her show

what she did know without the help of her paraprofessional. This allowed me to truly see what

she got out of the lesson. It also tells me more about her learning style. Over the past six weeks, I

have learned that she is able to express herself best through writing and hands on minds on

activities.

The story I had chosen, An American Face, discusses what an American face looks like.

As someone who comes from a multicultural family, I had not thought about how the students

might react to the Korean boy’s skin color. When I asked the students what it means to be an

American citizen, one student pointed out that another boy in our classroom like the Korean boy
from our story “doesn’t have an American face, because he is black.” Though I was not ready

for this conversation, I asked each student to raise their hand if they were an American citizen.

Once everyone in the class had a hand raised, I had the students look around. Once they had I

asked, “is there only one American face?” When the students said no, we discussed our many

differences and this new knowledge allowed the students to conclude, that the boy in our story

does not understand what it means to be an American citizen. I was proud of the way each

student responded to the differences and concepts that we discussed.