Pre-reading opportunities for structured conversations and multi-sensory vocabulary development aid students’ comprehension of a text. What’s Inside? provides a collaborative opportunity for students to infer a concept, character profile or setting from the contents of a specific container.
Strategies/Skills Used
Reading Strategy 1: Access background knowledge.
Reading Strategy 7: Determine the most important ideas and events and the relationship between them.
Reading Strategy 11: Make inferences and draw conclusions.
(1) Provide a container and contents for exploration. Sample ideas include a backpack, a lunchbox, a pocket, a witch’s cauldron, a lady’s purse, a pick-up truck, a recycling bin or an antique trunk.
(2) Present or discover the container, and wonder with the students, “Where did it come from? Who could it belong to? Why are all these things together?” Facilitate whole-group conversation around the concrete objects.
(3) Invite students to think and talk together in small groups to connect the contents and develop an understanding of the owner, setting or event that ties them together.
(4) Introduce a T-chart as an optional recording format to facilitate student thinking.
Primary
Intermediate
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Secondary
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