Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Any lovers of The Wizard of Oz?  With the new spinoff, Oz The Great and Powerful, coming out this month we had some fun making some yellow brick road inferences.  

We've talked about the fact that an inference is {the text} + {your schema/background knowledge} = {an inference}.  The kids are actually pretty good at naturally inferring, but struggle to support their inference with details from the book, or know what knowledge they used to get there.  This activity let them start with the inference and work their way backwards if they wanted.

After reading a chapter in our shared reading book and discussing, the kids cut a piece of yellow construction paper into fourths.  On one section they wrote the detail from the text that was their "brain clue", on two others they wrote pieces of background information from their schema that helped them, and on the last they wrote their inference.  Then out to the hall we went where everyone laid down their inferences in a long "yellow brick road".  While the Wizard of Oz soundtrack played (thank you Spotify) in the background, the kids walked down their piece of road, explaining their inference process to a partner.  Lots of light bulbs went on for my struggling students.  Sometimes all you need is a few good examples to see what something should look like...or to be able to say, "So that's what the teacher was talking about." 

I had the kids leave their inferences laid out in the hall so I could quickly assess them while the kids were out at recess.  The one drawback?  "Follow the yellow brick road..." was playing on repeat in my head the entire day.  Anyone ever realize that song has very little lyrics??