Inference Ace

Week of March 14^th - March 18th

The name of this week’s app was called the “Inference Ace.” This app was designed to help students build strong inferencing skills. When students develop strong inferencing skills, this will help students’ level of reading comprehension increase. After reviewing my students’ data, I realized that this was an area that needed to be readdressed. Inference Ace will help students to learn the different types of inferencing and even keep track of which types of inferencing the student is better/worse at completing. Lastly, the app has a couple of different levels that will actually time the students to check their fluency. This was important to me because I wanted to see how the students’ fluency, or rate they are reading, changes as they transition from reading with me to themselves or a partner.

I used this app as an engagement technique in guided reading. For every two weeks, each of my guided reading group has a topic that we focus in on. We have covered topics like main idea and details, summarizing, finding themes, comparing and contrasting, cause and effect, and a few more. But there was one large third grade topic that I realized that we had not covered as much as I would like: making inferences. Finding inferences throughout a passage are a hard concept to complete and to do it well. As I began to talk about inferences with the students, I realized that they had no clue what it was. What they had previously learned about inferences had not stuck. So I decided that for the next two weeks, that would be the area of focus during guided reading groups. After lesson planning, I realized that I wanted to make inferencing fun for the students. I researched and found the app called “Inference Ace.” It had received wonderful reviews, so I decided to see if this app would help to motivate my students more to read and better understand the concept of making inferences about pieces of text. As a way to get the students ready for the guided reading lesson, they were allowed ten minutes on the app, reading passages and making inferences.

This app received mixed results from my students. I think a majority of them liked it but it did not help them to see themselves as a better reader or did not help them to become more motivated to read. For question one that asked them to rank the overall score of the app, students ranked Inference Ace with a 3.67. That was honestly a little higher than I expected, which means that most students actually do like being challenged to find the inferences in a passage. For the second question, which asked them if the app made them feel like a better reader, eleven said yes and eleven said no. My class is pretty much split based on academic ability, so this result from the survey did not surprise me. The third question asked the student if the app motivated them to want to read more. The average score was a 3.68, which means that for most students Inference Ace made them want to read more. For the fourth question, the average score was a 3.59. This question focused on whether or not the app had an impact on their thoughts about themselves as readers. Lastly, the fifth question asked the students if they would use Inference Ace again. According to my results, seventeen students would use this app over again and five students would not.

There were many positives and benefits that I saw from this app. The first benefit that I saw with this app is that it really helped my students to understand making inferences. All of my students started out struggling with this app and the questions it asked. But after a couple of days, where we practiced with this concept over and over again, the students got better and better. Inferencing is a hard concept to learn, so this app was extremely helpful to explain what inferencing was and how to do it. The other positives of this app were that it is written in a way that helps students with their testing skills. It presents the questions in multiple choice and gives the students four choices to choose from. The app is written in a way that is suitable for all of my third graders, which includes all of my really high students and my really low students. I feel that it asks questions that hit both of extremes in my class. Lastly, the app rewards the students once he/she gets a certain number of questions correct. This incentive and reward is a positive reinforcement for the students.

The biggest negative that I saw with this app was that, for as many levels as my students completed, the passage that the students had to read never was longer than three sentences. I was disappointed in this because I feel that students have to first find the clues to make the inference and then figure out the inference. A lot of the questions were basic and I thought they could have made the questions a little harder. For this app to work the best, I think that it would be helpful to have different levels that the different academic levels of students could compete during class. Another negative that I saw with this app was that it did not have a read aloud feature. A few of my students really still need this and when an app does not have this feature, some of my lower students struggle and dislike the app.

The biggest change that I would make with this app would be to find a way to extend the passages for the students to read. It is not only important for the students to be able to make the inference but they also need to look for the key words and details that support the inference. Also, I would have added this app into the Free Centers rotation so the students could have the extra time to work on this area of focus. Lastly, I would find a way to better explain to the students how to connect making inferences and increasing motivation to read go hand in hand with one another.