Inferring, Compare/Contrast, and a Giveaway!

Holly from Fourth Grade Flipper made it to 300 followers and she's having a ginormous giveaway.  I'm one of the people that is helping her out... now if that's not enough reason to click the link above, I don't know what is!
So what did we do in school today?  During Reading we discussed inferences and we did the Pinterest idea of discussing the contents of my purse.  I forgot to take a picture of the anchor chart we made.  Here's what they came up with though: 
Contents of Mrs. S' PurseWhat - Why is it important?*phone - make calls, emergencies, use timer*wallet - need drivers license to drive, need inside cards to go buy stuff*keys - need to drive to school and go home, need to be able to open the house door*sharpie marker - because I'm a teacher, need permanent marker*Yoda toy - because I'm a mom, entertain my kids
Overall they pretty much got the point that they need to take the "facts" and add their schema to figure out why things are important.  
I got a kick out of the fact that they think every teacher carries a sharpie around with them.  Do you have one in your purse?  I have one in my purse since I label my boys' drinks, snacks, toys, etc when we are out and about with their initial.  Anyhow, the entire point of it was for them to be able to take the text of our story and compare/infer about the two sisters. 

This week we are reading "The Bridge Dancers".  I have to be honest - I'm SICK of doing Venn Diagrams to compare and contrast information.... doesn't help that this week we have done Venn Diagrams in Math as well.  
So instead we made picture frames of our 2 main characters - the sisters - and we pretended that we were creating pictures for the girls' mama (since all mommies love pictures of their children).  We folded our paper and drew 2 picture frames, then they drew a quick sketch of the 2 girls.  In each box they had to infer and write the contrasting information, and on the frame itself they wrote the similar information for the girls.  They worked by themselves and with partners, and then we went through the story together to make sure we had all the information.  It was a really fun lesson, and one that I know stuck with them.  
Hope you had a good day!