INFERENCE
Learning to see composition - structure, pattern, and relationship

As students make rich observations of an object, they can recognize underlying structures, patterns, and exceptions. This could be described as “putting the object back together” or as “seeing the composition.” Although this involves careful thinking and writing, this should still be thought of as observation. It is about making non-obvious but still true statements.

 

MAKE INFERENCES BY OBSERVING PATTERNS AND STRUCTURES

• Use observations (alone or in groups) to make inferences about the object or work.

• Build categories into which you can group some of the elements. Group elements by color, layer, topic, type, or any other clearly defined category you can observe.

• Identify exceptions to the groupings or patterns that you have found.

 

Questions to ask:

- Are there observations that might suggest time of day, season, place, or other aspects of the setting of the object or work?

- Are there observations that might suggest the age, social class, or other aspects of any characters or figures?

- Are there exceptions to that pattern? Do all the elements fit? Is there a snag?

ISOLATE / RECONTEXTUALIZE ELEMENTS

• Consider an individual element in isolation, as though it were separate from the whole. What is the full range of connotations and meanings that might be part of that particular element?

• Once you’ve considered the full range of meaning for a specific element, place it back into its context. Now consider that full range of meaning in relationship to the rest of the full text.

 

Questions to ask:

- There’s a sword there. What are all the possible meanings of a sword?

- Ok, so which of these possible meanings make sense considering this specific sword shown in this specific way?

 

DEVELOP LINES OF INQUIRY

• Using the patterns, structure, and relationships you have investigated, identify some avenue of questioning or line of inquiry that you might pursue. What questions are raised by your findings? Let these questions lead you back into yet more observations to explore possible answers.

 

Questions to ask:

- If that is true, then how might we explain this element? How does thinking about that change the way we see this object or work?

- That’s a good question! Can you explore this object or work for evidence which might suggest an answer to that question?

- Do you need to refine your words to capture what is really there?

 

 

IT’S A PROCESS!

Go back and forth testing the words you are using to describe the object or work against the details of the object or work itself.