Inferring
by Heather Ethell
Strategy of the Month:
Inferring
For the rest of the school year, RMS students will be developing their inferring skills. An inference is a validated interpretation of a text. Readers infer using clues provided by the author and their own background knowledge (connections) that relate to the text. Author's leave clues throughout their writing, and as readers we take those clues and connect to them to make meaning out of what the author has written. The clues a reader discovers can be subtle (right there, not difficult to find) or conspicuous (require more background knowledge and searching).
There are 13 different types of inferences a reader can make:
Emotion: How does he/she feel?
Location: Where is this?
Character/Characteristic: What is he/she/this like?
Action: What is happening?
Object: What is it?
Time/Era: What time of day is it? What season/year is it? What era is it?
Category: What group do they belong in?
Occupation: What job/role does he/she have?
Cause and Effect: What caused this to happen?
Literary: What do you know from the simile/metaphor/irony etc? What allusion do you make?
Author's Motive: What do you know about the reason(s) the author wrote this text? How does the author feel about the topic?
Cultural: What do you know about the culture, customs, and so on, in this text?
Vocabulary: What does this word mean?
Each time we make an inference, we need to support it with evidence from the text along with our connection(s). At home, you can ask these question while reading with your student, looking at/watching advertisements, or while watching TV/movies. Once your student has shared their inference, you need to follow up by asking, "How do you know?" At this point the student will need to share the clues they found in the text along with their connection(s).
Adults and students alike infer all the time. What we are trying to do is make our students more aware of the inferences they are making, the types of inferences there are, and how they came upon that inference (what clues and connections) they have to support themselves.
