Bethani McIntire

09/15/15

Teaching Reading: Mini Lesson Format (Calkins, 2001)

Targeted Literacy Strategy or Skill: Making inferences.
Grade level: 1st grade
Objective: The student will be able to make inferences about feelings and emotions. This will help them
to better understand their own feelings and the feelings of others.
Common Core State Standard/ PASS Standard: Common Core: SL.K.1, SL.K.2, SL.K.3, SL.K.6
Prior knowledge: (What students already know)
Students already know what feelings are and they have and still are learning the nature of feelings.

Observations/Rationale: (Before Lesson) What did you notice in your students work that let you
know this lesson was necessary? (This will be an approximation this semester.)
Students are having trouble understanding other students emotions. Students are struggling to interpret
others feelings when playing on the playground and during centers.

Materials Needed
Lesson from (Name your source including page number) STW pages 138-139
Mentor Text:
Materials: Big index cards (emotions)
Student Groups (whole/small group/partners): Whole group
Mini Lesson Format:
Connect (AKA~ Anticipatory Set, Engagement/Pre-reading): Good morning class. Today we are
going to talk about making inferences with our feelings and the feelings of people around us. If
you went home today after school and your mom had her arms crossed, was stomping her foot,
and had a scowl look on her face, what do you think she is feeling? How do you know that? Yes
exactly, so you would be making an inference of how she is feeling by her actions. When you are
able to see, sense, or feel what is someone else is feeling, it means you are making an inference
about his or her emotions. It is so important that we understand how to know what people are
feeling so that we can respect them and how they feel. I have noticed that sometimes when we are
outside on the playground or during our center time, we sometimes have trouble making
inferences on how our friends are feeling. Recently we have been introducing and going over
some emotions and talking about what they mean, but today we are going to talk about some of
those emotions again and do a fun activity to figure out some feelings that people may have.

Teach (Model/Explain): I am going to show you an emotion and I want you to pay close attention
to my actions and then make an inference on how I am feeling. (I will smile big, act jumpy and
excited, and laugh as I tell my students that I just got my first dog). How do you think I feel?
Why do you think that? Yes that is correct! I feel very happy about getting my first dog. See,

now you all have already made in an inference on how I am feeling by looking at the clues I was
giving. The emotions that we are going to be talking about today are happy, sad, and mad. Now
lets start our activity!

Active Engagement (AKA~ Check for Understanding: students try it out, teacher observes): I
need everyone to come over and circle up onto the ABC carpet. Now I need a volunteer. Thank
you so much for volunteering Lennon, come on up here and I am going to pin a feeling on your
back, but you cannot look at what the feeling is. Use this process for each emotion: happy, sad,
and mad. Use a different volunteer for each emotion. Class, I need you to be very quiet and
dont give Lennon any clues until I say. Lennon you can go ahead and go to the center of the
circle. Turn around several times so that everyone in the circle can see the feeling on your back.
Now students I want you to give Lennon clues so that he can figure out what emotion is on his
back. You can say I felt this way when.. or any other clues you can think of. After students
give a few clues ask, Lennon can you infer what emotion your classmates are describing? What
clues helped you know that? (Let student answer). Great inferring Lennon! Okay, now we will
move onto our next emotion so I need another volunteer. Continue through next two emotions.
After all emotions are done and I have students attention continue with the link.

Link (AKA~ Closing the Lesson [with accountability for the skill/process]): Today, we learned
about the emotions happy, sad, and mad. We were able to see how each of your clues were
different, but how they all led up to the same feeling. It is so important to be able to sense and
infer each others feeling so that we can better understand each other. It is also very important to
understand inferring so that we can dig deeper and grow as readers. I want you to keep this
strategy of inferring in mind when you are reading individually and during our read-alouds. Thank
you all for being such great volunteers and classmates.