Think Like a Detective! Mystery Inference Club

Come join Detective Higdon in this ongoing Inference Club where learners sharpen their observation and deductive reasoning skills!
Each class will begin with a thorough explanation of the terms inference, observation, evidence, and schema (prior knowledge).  We will then carefully examine a picture, making observations about the details that we see (including the background, small items, facial expressions, etc...) and activating prior knowledge about what we already know concerning our observations.  We will work together as a group to create inferences about what we think is happening in the picture based on our observations and the prior knowledge that we have about what we observed. 

Once students have inferred what they think is happening (or has happened), students will share their ideas of what caused this event to happen in the first place.  Students will reference the details from the picture to support their ideas.  Students will then predict what they think will likely happen next, utilizing details from the picture as well as their personal prior knowledge to make these predictions. 

The last 5-10 minutes of each class,  students will be given a "mystery" that is not in picture form.  It may be a riddle, a "crime", a secret message, or an inference paragraph of some sort,  but students will transfer the same critical thinking skills they used with the pictures to interact with text. 

I can not "give away" exactly what each week's picture will be about, but I can give a theme of sorts for what each picture will contain:

Week of March 9th: People
Week of March 16th: Nature
Week of March 23rd: Cars
Week of March 30th: Animals
Week of April 6th: Weather 
Week of April 13th: House 
Week of April 20th: Letters
Week of April 27th: A Room  **This is the last meeting before I take a break for Summer. New meetings will resume in the Fall** 


Come join Detective Higdon's team and solve some mini-mysteries!