Rationale
What I notice from my students in varying degrees is that they have a lack of relevant experiences to draw from when asked to infer in a text. They lack either personal knowledge, the knowledge that can come from sheer familiarity, or sometimes both. With all that the city of Richmond has to offer—a variety of museums, festivals, farmers' markets, a zoo, park and river systems, a vibrant art community, music scene, and multiple theater opportunities—they are exposed to very little outside of their communities and therefore have little to build on when asked to read between the lines and glean meaning from a text. This deficit limits my students when it comes to successfully being able to master the skill of making inferences and drawing conclusions. I notice this difficulty, although sometimes in different manifestations, in both my African American students and in my Hispanic students. Being able to make meaning out of implied information is a skill that is vital in establishing good reading comprehension. My curriculum unit, in part, helps students to master an aspect of this skill.
My unit addresses inferences in the form of characterization. Authors use several different techniques to develop characters in their writing. Rather than describe a character's complete personality to readers, they show who a character is and reveal traits by detailing the character's actions, describing the character's appearance, writing authentic speech, providing a window into the character's thoughts, and looking at how others view the character. By using these techniques, an author forces a reader to rely largely on his or her inference skills when determining who a character really is. Likewise, an autobiographer shapes the facets of his or her own character for readers by implying traits that must be inferred largely from actions in and reactions to different situations in his or her own life.
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