Drawing Conclusions...and a chance to win a free item!

What can you conclude about THIS picture?

If you can figure out why I took this picture (or what happened), you can pick one item from my store for free!

But back to my lesson... way back an eternity ago in October, we worked on Drawing Conclusions. I have to admit, until last year I HATED this skill. Because it was one of those things I always said HOW in the world can I get kids to make conclusions and not just predict or make random statements. That all changed when I found this post from Abby at The Inspired Apple. I did it last year with my kids (you can read about it here) and it was such a hit, I decided to do it again. But before we did that, we had to talk about what it meant to draw a conclusion. Enter cute anchor chart with the help of Krista's amazing graphics.

Can I just say how much my kids love to use the word schema?! We call it their filing cabinet in their brain and every time we learn something new we stick it in our filing cabinet. Who knew they would get such a kick out of it!?

We had to leave after this to go to support but when we came back they could not wait to see what I had in my purse.

After each item I pulled out they had to try to conclude something about me. If you look close you will see some of them are stating the obvious. We spent a lot of time talking about how to think deeper. For example, on calendar someone said you need to keep track of dates. We talked about how we needed to expand on that, because it is obvious that the function of a calendar is for dates. Eventually they came up with that I was busy and forgetful but needed to be organized. Much better. There were a couple others too but overall they did pretty good.

Later in the week it was time for another favorite of mine... mystery mail. I did this last year as well (though I did it a little differently) and you can find that post here. This year I did things a little differently. First I took out the envelope and had it hanging on the board. The students try to make observations and conclusions from JUST the envelope. Which I evidently forgot to take a picture of. Sorry! (Ok this picture shows the  clues as well but it doesn't have any information except for what we noticed or concluded before opening it. That is all written in black marker.) (Also, so sorry these are so blurry. I must have been exhausted when I took these because I thought they looked clear.)

Then each group was given a clue from the envelope. They had to use only their clue to try and make conclusions about the person who sent the mail. Each group brought their clue up to the board and shared a few ideas with us. The clues were: football field, nook (in the B&N store), chicken wings, and pens. Once each group shared their clue and ideas, the class started generating more conclusions.

They took the football field, pens, and bookstore picture and concluded that the sender wrote a book about football. That might have been the best conclusion because they used as much as they could. Others they came up with were that the person teaches how to play football and signs autographs (they got that from the pens and knowing that people sign autographs in stores).

After we shared our ideas and listed some on the board, I had all of the students fill out a sheet with their conclusion about the mystery sender and then make a guess about who sent it. One of my kid's responses was so funny I made him rewrite it so that I could keep it forever.

He decided that it was from a male (football) and must have been my college boyfriend (the pens) but that I broke up with him and now he is a professional football player (because pros sign autographs). I cracked up!

Don't forget to make a guess about my first picture for your chance to win an item from my store!