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Making Inferences: How To Tips

When you begin to teach your young learners to infer, you may find it helpful to have a few tips and tricks from someone who has a lot of experience in this area. I love teaching this difficult skill, mainly because I’ve developed strategies that really work! I hope you find these tips helpful for both you and your students ~ let’s get inferring!

 

Making Inferences How to Tips

Inferring – A Difficult Skill

Do you have trouble teaching your first, second or even third graders to infer? It is a difficult skill to teach and one of the hardest things is finding material to help teach it.

Practice Making Inferences Using Text from Books 

There are plenty of great books with inferences scattered throughout but that’s what makes it challenging to specifically target the skill, since you may find only a few in children’s picture books. Ideally, when students learn to infer, the implications in the text will naturally turn into inferences that makes the text make more sense and even develop a love of reading. 

Using Passages to Practice Inferring

To target the skill effectively, kids need a lot of practice! That also means you need a lot of ways for them to practice. What if you found a resource that had short passages with built inferences, that told stories, just like they would find in book? And what if the resource was differentiated and the perfect length for your students?  What if the short passages covered FICTION and NONFICTION material? Wouldn’t that be nice?

LOOK NO FURTHER!

In this resource there are 14 Fiction Mini Passages with high interest topics for kids in grades 1-3. The inferences are built in and the graphic organizers are differentiated in that they:
1.) ask for the text that supports the inference (the inference is given)
2.) ask for the inference (the text is given) and finally,
3.) a graphic organizer that is blank so that students can fill in both the inference and the text that supports it. This way, teachers can scaffold their support.
* This resource is great for second grade but works well for above first grade levels and struggling third graders.

Teaching Tips for Making Inferences

I have found that if you give the student the inference, it is easier for them to find the text that supports it. This tip is a working backwards approach to inferring since it is easier for them to find the text to support the inference. Once their confidence builds, you can then move on to the next step which is to give them the text and have them give you the inference.
I know that it is every teacher’s wish for their students to be able to independently read text and find the inferences that supports that text, so here is the plan to make that happen. When you pull your inferring strategy groups, listen to your students read and allow them to tell you their thought process; you will be able to determine what will help them with this difficult skill. Having everything in one neat package makes this so much easier!
Blank Organizer

Intentionally Short Passages

Because the passages are short, your strategy group will take less time with quality skills covered, as opposed to reading a book and waiting for a good inference to show up. This way you can teach your students about it immediately.

The same format is used for the Nonfiction Mini Passages, shown below.
This resource features 11 mini passages
Making Inferences with Nonfiction 11 PassagesMaking Inferences Bundle 14 Fiction and 11 Nonfiction passages
The non-fiction passages are also great for integrating social studies into your reading curriculum. These resources have been bundled for savings and convenience!

St. Patrick’s Day Inferring

Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, check out this St. Patrick’s Day inferring resource!  

St. Patrick's Day Making Inferences Passages
Teachers Helping Teachers! It’s an awesome thing!

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I hope that you found something useful in this post. Anytime I can find something that will help my students master a skill, I am so happy! 
Thank you for stopping in!
~ Carrie

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