Direct Instruction: Inferring Mood
Students are using inference to understand the mood of the story
This video shows a lesson on inference and finding clues to understand the mood and atmosphere of the text.
Reflection: We had been working on mood in class, when we as teachers had a discussion on inferencing. This made me wonder if I had given this information to students to help them figure out the mood and atmosphere of the text. The groups I had been working with had struggle to find the clues to support their answers, but I was pleasantly surprise by this group, who could readily find supporting evidence.
Things to note: I am doing Mood and Atmosphere as part of a Year 7 and 8 research project, providing myself with lots of PD. I have found it really interesting so far. I am using short stories to help maintain student interest and provide a range of texts by different authors.
Site content
Short Stories - Used in this lesson.
Student Generated Text used in previous lessons, to help generate understanding of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Some of the language features authors use to create mood.
Inferring the Mood
We are learning to use supporting evidence from the text .
We are learning understand how the author portray the mood and atmosphere in a story.
Instructions:
Students read through the story independently or with a buddy. This is to familiarise themselves with the story.
Group time: Remind students the purpose for reading today.
Reread a page (this limits wait time, and helps students to focus on the task) When finished reading you need to think of 3 statements that are either true or false, e.g. 2 true and 1 false (This allows for students having the same or similar statements.)
Share a true or false statement from todays reading.
Discuss how these statements help us to understand the mood of the story. - How did the characters feel at that point? How do we know that?
Follow up task on slides add your true/false statements to the slides and complete table with example of language that influences the mood.
Learner Generated Content
Manaiakalani Education Trust
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Auckland, New Zealand