1. Making Inferences and Drawing Conclusions

2. What will you learn? Understanding what inference is.
Learn how to look for evidence or clues in a reading and use your background knowledge to base your inference.
Understand what a conclusion is.
Learn how to look at evidence or clues in a reading to base your conclusion.

3. What is inference?
A logical guess or conclusion based on evidence and prior knowledge.
What is in the passage + what you already know = inference.

4. Let’s Play Detective Sometimes you hear or read the term
“making inferences” or “drawing conclusions”
in an assignment. This means that you have
to play detective and figure something out
using the clues the reading gives you.

5. Authors vs. Readers Authors imply, readers infer.
Authors vs. Readers
Authors imply, readers infer.
Authors make implications that readers have to infer.
What do I mean by these statements?
Good readers are detectives who are always looking out for clues to help them better understand stories and pictures.

6. How Do Good Readers Make Inferences?
How Do Good Readers Make Inferences?
They use:
Word/text clues
Picture clues
Define unknown words
Look for emotion (feelings)
Use what they already know
Look for explanations for events
ASK themselves questions!

7. To make an inference you will need to:
1.) Look for evidence or details from the text. 2.) Use your mind and think about what you already know (background knowledge). 3.) Base your conclusion or make your inference.

8. What I learned from reading
Inference T-Chart
What I learned from reading
What I already knew
My inference

10. What I learned from reading
What I already knew
Dogs love to chase cats
The cat is walking in front of the dogs and they aren’t moving or barking
These are German Shepherds, which are often trained as police dogs
My inference
These are very well trained dogs, or they would be chasing that cat.

12. What will happen in this picture?
What I learned from reading
What I already knew
My inference

13. The Builders I told them a thousand times if I told them once:
Stop fooling around, I said, with straw and sticks;
They won’t hold up. You’re taking an awful chance.
Brick is the stuff to build with, solid bricks.
You want to be impractical, go ahead.
But just remember, I told them; wait and see,
You’re making a big mistake. Awright, I said,
But when the wolf comes, don’t come running to me.
The funny thing is, they didn’t. There they sat,
One in his crummy yellow shack, and one
Under his roof of twigs, and the wolf ate
Them, hair and hide. Well, what is done is done.
But I’d been willing to help them, all along,
If only they’d once admit they were wrong.
Sara Henderson

14. In this poem, who are the builders?
What I learned from reading
What I already knew
My inference

15. Pre-Test Revisited! 
Rain is a sheet of water on the windshield of the pickup truck. Lead gray, the sky appears in brief arcs as the wipers slam back and forth. The forestry road clings to an old avalanche slope, and the roadbed is under what must be a foot of mud. Tej’s truck wheels sing and the side window disappear in a spray of mud. Tej whiteknuckles the steering wheel. “Might be too early in the spring to be on this road, Tej.” “We’re almost through,” he says, his teeth clenched. “We could turn around.” Tej throws me a look. “We’d waste hours going back, Liam. We do not want to do that.” Through the mud on his side window I peer down the stump-strewn slope. The truck fishtails, and suddenly I’m getting a good view of the downhill run. “You’re too close to the edge!” Tej cranks the steering wheel. Plumes of mud plaster the side of the truck. I feel the back end slew, then drop, as a wheel catches the crumbling shoulder. I’m pushed back into the seat, like I’m in a dentist’s chair that is tilted. Tej mats the accelerator.

16. Draw Conclusions
Evidence from text + Prior Knowledge = Conclusion

17. A Quick Review When people talk, they don’t always say exactly what
they mean. The listener must figure out what the speaker
really means.
Inference in reading is when you need to use the clues
written in a story to draw a conclusion. In other words, you
need to be a “word detective.”
You will not always be right when you draw a conclusion
from a story, but the more you try, the more skilled you will
become. Being a good reader and word detective is a good
thing!