Many of us are finishing up an inference unit and looking ahead to making connections. If you think like me, the units are backwards but that’s another topic. I know many of you are thinking (well, they are very similar), I argue that students must connect before they can infer. I am surprised at the number of people who disagree with me. They argue that a good connection will come from a good inference.

Anyway….I wanted to post about twiducate and its use with these two topics. Its very easy to embed pictures and youtube videos into twiducate. I would suggest doing this, pinning the post to the top of the timeline and having your students infer / connect to the media you have posted. This way each student gets to post, read and comment on everyone elses post. Hopefully students will connect to other student posts and comment about it. Ideally you would want some self connections to the media you presented but you could extend this to have your students connect with each other and post comments. You could even prompt worldly connections to be made in the comments section.

If you are just interested in inferences, why not post some piece of text (song, pic, video, story etc.) and have students post evidence to support an opinion. You’d be surprised at the discussions that could unfold on twiducate. There seems to be more confidence in students behind an avatar.

What are your thoughts on connections / inferences? Can you change my twiducate lesson idea to make it better?

admin General inferences, making connections, twiducate

As a follow up to this inference lesson, I showed my students 15 short Mac vs PC ads and we discussed the persuasiveness of Apple computer. Why is the Mac guy younger? hipper? more modern? etc. How does he try to persuade you?

Its a great discussion piece about persuasive ads and how Apple tries to persuade you away from a PC. The kids all know itunes, imovie, movie maker etc. so they easily relate to the commercials.

admin Lesson Ideas inferences, persuasive writing

I’m on the concept of advertising right now and how it can be used in the classroom. I remember a lesson from a friend who used still images to get her point across about advertising. Students looked at the pictures below and determined the message the company was trying to get across. Students are bombarded with advertisements everyday so why not look at them little closer, especially if you wish to tie into the persuasive writing piece.

admin Lesson Ideas advertisements, inferences, persuasive writing