Can you infer what this is?

This week we worked on the skill of inferring during our whole group reading time. I love working on this skill with 1st graders as there are so many ways to tackle this topic to help little ones grasp the concept. One of the books that we read is called, Shark in the Park, in which a little boy looks through his telescope and keeps seeing what he thinks is a shark. Each time it is just a small piece of another thing, such as a cat's ear or a crow's wing. The kiddos love the book as it has neat cut-outs to simulate looking through the telescope. 

After reading the story, we set out with our iPad-scopes in search of various items. This has been a great way for students to not only grasp the concept, but to share that learning with others. This year we tweeted out our iPad-scope pictures in hopes that others would try to infer what we saw. Check out our classroom twitter page!

Here is one of the pics that was taken. Can you guess what it is?

Mmmmmm...Dirt dessert maybe??

After a lot of discussion, W. showed us the picture he took of the actual object. Needless to say, none of us were very interested in eating it after seeing what it really was. I guess in some ways it was dirt dessert, just not the yummy kind with pudding and Oreos!

Inferring lesson

Before Christmas we read a story called, Shark in the Park in which a little boy named Timothy Pope is looking through his telescope in the park and is sure he keeps seeing a shark. The lens of the telescope is an actual hole in the pages of the book, and as each page is turned the fin of the shark turns out to be something quite ordinary like a cat's ear, a crow's wing, and even his dad's Elvis-style haircut. 

This book was used to help us learn the reading comprehension strategy of  inferring. As an extension of this book and a tie-in to our ITLS Standards (Instructional Technology & Learning Standards). Students worked with a partner to take pictures of an ordinary object up close and then at normal range. We used both digital cameras as well as the cameras on our iPad2s.  Each child then had to tell what they thought they saw when looking at the up close object and then tell what they actually saw. We took our ideas and typed them in MS Word and then learned how to insert our pictures from a network file into our documents. Along with the other first grade classes, we will put all of our ideas into a large class book which will be shared with the entire school.
See below for the raw footage of just a few of the kids' ideas...

Can you guess what this is?

Hunter saw a jail at Glenbrook School...

but it was really just Mr. Sufka's tie! (our principal)

How about this one?

Ayden thought he saw a Captain's hook at Glenbrook School...

but it was just a door handle!!