Inferring with Tanny

Do you know this book? 

While I love me some Mosaic of Thought, I find the lessons Tanny McGregor provides for teaching Mosaic's comprehension strategies are so useful.

This week I used the schema connections lesson from Tanny's book. (I have never met Tanny, but I love her book and I know that if we ever met, we'd be first-naming each other, so I am just gonna do it. If you know her, tell her I love her.)

Tanny recommends using a song that most kids can make connections to. (I won't give out Tanny's whole lesson here. You gotta go buy her book!) 

After we listened, we used a 3 column chart labeled inference, schema, and text evidence.

Y'all, my kids were so insightful! We started with text connections, talked about feelings, and worked our way to the lyrics. My kiddos were able to generate some powerful inferences and had no problem supporting them with schema connections and text evidence.

At one point, they had a debate on whether the main character was happy as an adult. They disagreed with, piggy-backed on, and supported each other's ideas as if they had been doing it forever. (I happen to know that they haven't. This crew was raised on a diet of basal readers and TAKS passages. TAKS used to be our state assessment, for those of you who don't live in Texas.)

I wanted to cry. Out of happiness. And frankly, that hasn't happened all too much. (Remember Blurt Boy, Other Kid, and Attitude Girl? Yeah.)

Anyway, let your fingers fly to order Tanny's book. It's just that good!