This document discusses inferences and how readers make inferences when reading. It explains that making inferences involves taking clues from the text and combining them with your own background knowledge to picture what is happening beyond just the explicit words. It provides an example of making inferences about the emotions and perspectives of characters in a cartoon based on visual clues and things left unsaid. The document encourages readers to practice making inferences to better understand implicit details and meanings in texts.

1. Inferences
Hmmmm??
A Joe Fasen Enhanced Powerpoint Presentation

2. What is an
inference anyway?

3. To infer is to take a close look at
what you are reading and then
picture in your head what is
happening.

4. While we are reading,
we are picturing the
story in our head and
asking ourselves
questions about what is
going on.

5. We find clues in the story and can
make decisions based on what we
know from our own lives

6. For example, look at this cartoon…

8. First let’s
consider Lucy.
What do we
see?
By reading the
picture, we can
see how the
author drew her.

9. What do
we know?
We know that
when people
look like that,
they are usually
angry.

10. We can infer that Lucy is
Angry.

11. What do we
read?
We read that
Lucy sighs and
then says “Youth
never listens.”

12. What do we know
in our heads?
We know that
Lucy is a “youth”.
We also know that
when someone
says that someone
“never listens,” It’s
an insult.

13. Because Lucy wouldn’t want to
insult herself, we can infer that
Lucy thinks she is more
Mature
than Linus and Snoopy.

14. What can you infer from this picture?

15. What can we infer from this passage?
She stumbled down the road, not sure what
made her car veer like that. The water was
running down her face and dripping off her hair.
She suddenly saw the lights of another car. She
was sure they would be able to help her.

16. Can you infer what just happened
to the woman?
Can you infer the setting?

17. Good! Now you know!
Good readers visualize, question, and
make judgments about what they read.