Do you remember being asked to make inferences when you were in third grade reading groups? I do. And although I was considered a strong reader, I had no idea idea what an inference was.
We've been working hard to take the mystery out of inferences, because we make them every day. To make an inference you use your schema (background knowledge - the stuff that's already inside your head) plus the clues that you see (or hear) around you. For example, if I hear my dog scratching at the door, I can infer that he wants to go out.
Readers do the same thing with texts. They use their schema plus clues from the text or the illustrations. We learned that readers can infer in three different ways:
1. Infer the meaning of an unknown word
2. Infer to make a prediction
3. Infer to deepen our understanding of what's happening in the text
Share the inferences you make as you read with your third grader!
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