Making Inferences

What Is an Inference?

Why Make Inferences?

Tips for Making Inferences

Use the Strategy

Practice the Strategy

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Making Inferences

You make inferences all the time—when you size up a person or a situation that you encounter.

What can you infer, or guess, about the situation pictured above?

What is an inference?

Making Inferences

An inference is a guess based on clues.

What is an inference?

Use these clues to make an inference about where Sari is going.

Sari leaves a note for her parents.Clue #2

Sari picks up a stack of books.Clue #3

Clue #1 Sari puts on a jacket.

Clue #4 Sari takes a small white card from her dresser and puts it in her pocket.

Where is Sari going?

Making Inferences

You probably guessed that Sari is going to the library—probably to return some books.

What is an inference?

told you that Sari will be gone for a while.Clue #2

told you that Sari is taking books where she is going.

Clue #3

Clue #1 told you that Sari is about to leave her house.

Clue #4 told you that Sari may need some type of card where she is going.

If you have ever used a library, you know that a card is required to use its services.

Making Inferences

You make an inference when you combine clues in a text with

What is an inference?

what you already know

to make a guess about something.

clues + prior knowledge = inference

Making Inferences

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What clues in the following pictures help you make inferences, or educated guesses, about the people and situations in the pictures?

What is an inference?

Making Inferences

Why make inferences?

Writers don’t always state their ideas directly.

Often they provide readers with enough information to discover meaning for themselves—to make inferences.

In this way, the reader becomes an active participant in making meaning.

Making Inferences

Why make inferences?

Making inferences helps you

• understand what you read— even information and ideas that are not directly stated

• relate what you are reading to your life

• see connections among ideas

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Making Inferences

Tips for Making Inferences

As you read, pay attention to information and details in the text. These are your clues.

Sam gave the lady behind the window $10. She gave him back $2. He went in and gave his ticket to the kid standing by a rope. The kid then moved the rope, and Sam went in and started looking for a place to sit. Soon it got dark, so everyone in there got quiet.

Making Inferences

Consider what you already know.

Sam gave the lady behind the window $10. She gave him back $2. ($10 - $2 = $8; Sam spent $8.) He went in and gave his ticket to the kid standing by a rope. The kid then moved the rope, and Sam went in and started looking for a place to sit. (Where do kids stand by ropes taking tickets? Sports arenas, theaters?)

Tips for Making Inferences

Making Inferences

Combine the details (clues) that you read with what you already know (prior knowledge) to make an inference.

Sam spent $8. It costs about $8 to go see a movie. I’m going to infer that Sam went to a movie theater.

clues + prior knowledge = inference

Tips for Making Inferences

Making Inferences

Keep your inferences in mind as you keep reading. Use new information to decide if your inferences are correct.

Sam gave the lady behind the window $10. She gave him back $2. He went in and gave his ticket to the kid standing by a rope. The kid then moved the rope, and Sam went in and started looking for a place to sit. Soon it got dark, so everyone in there got quiet. (It is dark and quiet in movie theaters, so I think my inference is correct.)

Tips for Making Inferences

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Making Inferences

As you read “The Green Mamba,” stop at each open-book sign and think about what you have just read.

These questions will help you learn how to use making inferences as a reading strategy.

Stop and

think.

Answer the

question.

Example [End of Section]

Use the Strategy

Making Inferences

Practice the Strategy

Which of the questions above requires you to combine information from the story with your own knowledge to make an inference?

1. Where does Mr. Fuller work?

2. Why does Mr. Fuller lower his children, his wife, and himself out of the window and to the ground?

3. Would you like to hold a snake?

Making Inferences

Practice the Strategy

When you need to make an inference to answer a question, try making a chart that looks like this:

It Says I Say And So In the first

column, write down information in the text that helps you answer the question.

In the second column, write down what you already know about that topic.

In the third column, combine what the text says with what you know to come up with the answer—your inference.

Making Inferences

Use a chart like this one to answer the questions on page 249.

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It Says I Say And So

information in the text that helps you answer the question

what you already know about that topic

your inference

Practice the Strategy

Making Inferences

The End