What is Salient Now?

This week my grade 7's have been developing their understanding of salience and how what a person finds salient influences how they move up the Ladder of Inference and what they consider salient the next time they have a choice to make.

This was an example I created for  the class.

 Students then had to start with the end point and construct a Ladder of Inference that would lead to what is salient now.

The next step was to write a story using the above planner. Many students found this extremely challenging and because this approach to learning is new to me, my  inability to articulate clearly what I was looking for probably created some confusion. The ability to deal with a complex task is important though and we persisted. One on one work and small group discussions helped clarify purpose, but it was one student, Kyle, grasping the activity fully and writing a very clever and amusing story which he read to the class that caused the light bulbs to light up. Students are now busy writing and we will publish once they are finished.