The document provides guidance on making inferences when reading texts. It defines an inference as a conclusion drawn from evidence and prior knowledge. Readers are encouraged to think of inferences as "reading between the lines" to gain a deeper understanding of characters, themes, symbols, plots, and settings that are not explicitly stated. Examples are provided to demonstrate making inferences, including inferring that a football team won a championship based on an image of them celebrating on stage with a trophy.

1. Investigators:
Making Inferences
ELAGSE5RI1: Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says
explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
I can quote accurately from a text when drawing inferences from the text.
Tiffany Moody

2. What is happening here?
What do you already know? What clues do
you see in the image?

3. Strategy: What is an Inference?
INFERENCE: a conclusion based on evidence
(clues) from image or text and scheme (what I
know) that helps you understand the text.

4. Read Between the Lines
Think of an inference as
“reading between the lines” of
what you observe or read based
on EVIDENCE.
The image shows
football players on
a stage celebrating
with a trophy.
I know that when
football players
celebrate on a
stage, it is a big
or special game.
I can infer that
the team won
their
championship
game.

5. Why Should You Make Inferences?
Inferences help the reader gain a better
understanding of the text.
 Character
 Theme
 Symbols
 Plot
 Setting

6. Making Inferences
Steam Shovel by Charles
Steam Shovel
The dinosaurs are not all dead.
I saw one raise its iron head
To watch me walking down the road
Beyond our house today.
Its jaws were dripping with a load
Of earth and grass that it had cropped.
It must have heard me where I stopped,
Snorted white steam my way,
And stretched its long neck out to see,
And chewed, and grinned quite amiably.
 by Charles Malam

7. Model Making Inferences

8. What do you notice? What clues do the image provide? What can you infer about this group?

9. Practice Making Inferences
From Lizards, Frogs and Polliwogs by Douglas Florian
The ?
I wear a helmet
On my back.
It’s hard
And guards
Me from attack.
And if I wheeze,
Or sneeze,
Or cough,
The shell I dwell in
Won’t fall off.
It’s glued without
A screw or mortise.
I’m born with it,
For I’m a ?

10. Practice Making Inferences

11. Independent Practice: Making Inferences
Listen for Me by Joyce Sidman
Listen for Me (Spring Peeper)
Listen for me on a spring night,
on a wet night,
on a rainy night.
Listen for me on a still night,
for in the night, I sing.
That is when my heart thaws,
my skin thaws,
my hunger thaws.
That is when the world thaws,
and the air begins to ring.
I creep up from the cold pond,
the ice pond,
the winter pond.
I creep up from the chill pond,
to breathe the warming air.
I cling to the green reeds,
the damp reeds,
the muddy reeds.
I cling to the slim reeds;
my brothers are everywhere.
My throat swells with spring love,
with rain love,
with water love.
My throat swells with peeper love;
my song is high and sweet.
Listen for me on a spring night,
on a wet night,
on a rainy night.
Listen for me tonight, tonight
and I'll sing you to sleep.

 Text © 2005 Joyce Sidman

12. Making Inferences

13. Song of the Waterboat