1. Write this in your journal:
Literal - If something is literal, you can point to it in the text. The information is right there.
Inferencing - means that you understand something that the author did not directly say.
Analysis - means that you look at each part of what the author wrote. You are trying to find out why each detail is important to the ideas of the author.

2. Read this
The young girl is standing on the corner. She is wearing a bright red jacket and bright red snow pants. She has a scarf tied around her face. She is wearing striped mittens. She looks to the left down the street. She stamps her feet. She puts her backpack on the ground. She looks to the left down the street again.
List the things you know that the author did not directly say. List the clues that helped you.
Inference
Clues 1. 2. 3.

3. Questions Literal Question: What color is the girl’s jacket?
Inferential Question: What is the girl waiting for?
Critical Question: Is the girl dressed warmly enough?

4. Create an inference based on this saying
A mom put this sign on her teenaged son’s door.
Enter at your own risk.
An unknown bacteria is said to be growing in this room.

5. Create an inference based on this saying
In the football team’s locker room.
I am your coach, not your mother.

6. Create an inference based on this saying
At the Vet’s office.
Puddles are for jumping over, not walking through.

7. Create an inference based on this saying
Bumper sticker on a highway patrolman’s car.
Don’t slow down on my account.
But if you don’t, it will probably hurt your account.

8. Create an inference based on this saying
Bumper sticker on a teenager’s car.
A floorboard? There’s carpet on the floorboard?

9. Figure out this riddle
In the old West a man rides into town on Friday. He stays for three days, and leaves on Friday. How can this be?

10. Figure out this riddle
There is a man walking down the road dressed entirely in black. There are no lights on anywhere and no moon. A car with no lights comes down the road and manages to avoid the man. How?

11. Figure out this riddle
You are in a cabin with four walls all facing south. There is a bear outside. What color is the bear?

12. Figure out this riddle
You walk into a room with only one match. You must light a lantern, a gas stove, the pilot light of a water heater and a fire in a fire place. What do you light first?

13. Figure out this riddle
Two men are found in a cabin on a mountain dead, how did they die?

14. Figure out this riddle
Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice all live in the same house. Bob and Carol go out to a movie, and when they return, Alice is lying dead on the floor in a puddle of water and glass. It is obvious that Ted killed her but Ted is not prosecuted or severely punished.

15. Figure out this riddle
In the middle of the ocean is a yacht. Several corpses are floating in the water nearby.

16. Figure out this riddle
A woman comes home with a bag of groceries, gets the mail, and walks into the house. On the way to the kitchen, she goes through the living room and looks at her husband, who had blown his brains out. She then continues to the kitchen, puts away the groceries, and makes dinner.