INFERRING AND PREDICTING

Metacognitive Reading Strategies

#5 & #6

MAKING CONNECTIONS

Metacognitive Reading Strategy #5

MAKING CONNECTIONS

• Everyone has experiences, knowledge, opinions, and emotions that they can draw upon when reading.

• Good readers use that knowledge to make connections to better understand what they are reading.

• Making connections helps readers to gain a deeper, more personal understanding of a text.• There are three types of connections:• Text to Text• Text to Self• Text to World

MAKING CONNECTIONS

This reminds me of…

I remember when…

This is similar to…

This part is just like…

TEXT – TO – TEXT

MAKING CONNECTIONS

• What does this remind me of in another book I’ve read? 

• How is this text similar to other things I’ve read? 

• How is this different from other books I’ve read?

• Have I read about something like this before?

Text-to-text connections are when readers are reminded of other things that they have read, other books by the same author, stories from a similar genre, or perhaps on the same topic. Readers gain insight during reading by thinking about how the information they are reading connects to other familiar text. • Example: This character has the same

problem that I read about in a story last year!

TEXT – TO – SELF

MAKING CONNECTIONS

• What does this remind me of in my life? 

• What is this similar to in my life? • How is this different from my life? • Has something like this ever

happened to me?• How does this relate to my life?• What were my feelings when I

read this?

Text-to-self connections are highly personal connections that a reader makes between a piece of reading material and the reader’s own experiences or life. • Example: This

reminds me of a vacation we took to my grandfather’s farm.

TEXT – TO – WORLD

MAKING CONNECTIONS

Text-to-world connections are the larger connections that a reader brings to a reading situation. We all have ideas about how the world works that goes far beyond our own personal experiences. We learn about things through television, movies, magazines, and newspapers. • Example: I saw a program

on TV that talked about things described in this chapter.

• What does this remind me of in the real world?

• How is this text similar to things that happen in the real world? 

• How is this different from things that happen in the real world? 

• How did that part relate to the world around me?

• It helps readers understand how characters feel and the motivation behind their actions.

• It helps readers have a clearer picture in their head as they read thus making the reader more engaged and active in their reading.

• It keeps the reader from becoming bored while reading.• It sets a purpose for reading and keeps the reader

focused.• Readers can see how other readers connected to the

reading.

MAKING CONNECTIONS IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE…

MY CONNECTIONS

We

Shall

Overco

me

Be the change

you wish to see in

the world.

• Using your independent reading book find examples of:• Text-to-text• Text-to-self• Text-to-world

WHEN DO YOU MAKE CONNECTIONS?

JOURNAL ENTRY• Topic sentence• Your definition of making connections• An example(s) of when you have used this strategy• Why this strategy is important.

MAKING CONNECTIONS

Metacognitive Reading Strategy #5

INFERRING AND PREDICTING

INFERRING

• Reading between the lines to:• …figure out extra information the author wants a

reader to know• …gain additional meaning about what’s going on in

a story• …take what you know and add in further

information

INFERRING

Maybe… I think that…

Perhaps…

It could be…

• Reading between the lines and putting together what is said (what you know) to figure out what is unsaid. (What you are not explicitly told)

SLOW INFERENCE

Wait a second…

I know this…

And this…

And that…

So let me put this all together…

AH HA! I know what she’s really saying here! I’m a genius…

QUICK INFERENCE

“‘You say you didn’t know it was due today?’ my teacher asked me with tears in her eyes…” “ I don’t believe it”

My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. In newspaper photos of missing girls from the seventies, most looked like me: white girls with mousy brown hair. This was before kids of all races and genders started appearing on milk cartons or in the daily mail. It was still back when people believed things like that didn't happen. In my junior high yearbook I had a quote from a Spanish poet my sister had turned me on to, Juan Raman Jimanez. It went like this: "If they give you ruled paper, write the other way." I chose it both because it expressed my contempt for my structured surroundings a la the classroom and because, not being some dopey quote from a rock group, I thought it marked me as literary. I was a member of the Chess Club and Chem Club and burned everything I tried to make in Mrs. Delminico's home ec class. My favorite teacher was Mr. Botte, who taught biology and liked to animate the frogs and crawfish we had to dissect by making them dance in their waxed pans. I wasn't killed by Mr. Botte, by the way. Don't think every person you're going to meet in here is suspect. That's the problem. You never know. Mr. Botte came to my memorial (as, may I add, did almost the entire junior high school --I was never so popular) and cried quite a bit. He had a sick kid. We all knew this, so when he laughed at his own jokes, which were rusty way before I had him, we laughed too, forcing it sometimes just to make him happy. His daughter died a year and a half after I did. She had leukemia, but I never saw her in my heaven. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer. My murderer believed in old-fashioned things like eggshells and coffee grounds, which he said his own mother had used. My father came home smiling, making jokes about how the man's garden might be beautiful but it would stink to high heaven once a heat wave hit. But on December 6, 1973, it was snowing, and I took a shortcut through the cornfield back from the junior high. It was dark out because the days were shorter in winter, and I remember how the broken cornstalks made my walk more difficult. The snow was falling lightly, like a flurry of small hands, and I was breathing through my nose until it was running so much that I had to open my mouth. Six feet from where Mr. Harvey stood, I stuck my tongue out to taste a snowflake…

INFERRING

PREDICTING

• Predicting is taking what you know (or think you know) and making an educated guess about what will happen later in the text.

• With predicting, you can almost always find out if you were correct in your prediction or not. (Eventually :)

PREDICTING

My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. In newspaper photos of missing girls from the seventies, most looked like me: white girls with mousy brown hair. This was before kids of all races and genders started appearing on milk cartons or in the daily mail. It was still back when people believed things like that didn't happen. In my junior high yearbook I had a quote from a Spanish poet my sister had turned me on to, Juan Raman Jimanez. It went like this: "If they give you ruled paper, write the other way." I chose it both because it expressed my contempt for my structured surroundings a la the classroom and because, not being some dopey quote from a rock group, I thought it marked me as literary. I was a member of the Chess Club and Chem Club and burned everything I tried to make in Mrs. Delminico's home ec class. My favorite teacher was Mr. Botte, who taught biology and liked to animate the frogs and crawfish we had to dissect by making them dance in their waxed pans. I wasn't killed by Mr. Botte, by the way. Don't think every person you're going to meet in here is suspect. That's the problem. You never know. Mr. Botte came to my memorial (as, may I add, did almost the entire junior high school --I was never so popular) and cried quite a bit. He had a sick kid. We all knew this, so when he laughed at his own jokes, which were rusty way before I had him, we laughed too, forcing it sometimes just to make him happy. His daughter died a year and a half after I did. She had leukemia, but I never saw her in my heaven. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer. My murderer believed in old-fashioned things like eggshells and coffee grounds, which he said his own mother had used. My father came home smiling, making jokes about how the man's garden might be beautiful but it would stink to high heaven once a heat wave hit. But on December 6, 1973, it was snowing, and I took a shortcut through the cornfield back from the junior high. It was dark out because the days were shorter in winter, and I remember how the broken cornstalks made my walk more difficult. The snow was falling lightly, like a flurry of small hands, and I was breathing through my nose until it was running so much that I had to open my mouth. Six feet from where Mr. Harvey stood, I stuck my tongue out to taste a snowflake…

PREDICTING

JOURNAL ENTRY• Topic sentence• Your definition of inferring and predicting• An example of when you have used inferring and

predicting• Why this strategy is important.

INFERRING & PREDICTING