inferring with poetry

This is a great poem for inferencing written by Gary Soto. Its a poem from his book: Fearless Fernie. It was used on the 5th grade MCAS test a few years back. You can see that I typed it for display on my Smartboard. You can easily infer the speaker's feelings:

• His hair jumped from his head..infer: excited
• It was his lucky day!...infer: happy
• He dug till his fingers were bleeding...infer: he is working hard!

I love that the poem ends with this message: When you leave something sweet behind, others come and get it. Try to get the children to explain what Fernie learned and apply it to other situations.Christine