As you may have noticed, I’ve mainly focused my attention on reading this term in my classroom. I’ve invested my spare time into researching and trying out different methods to hone in on these very important reading skills that my kids are struggling with. This post will shed light on some of the different ways that I’ve tried to teach children the vital reading skills, such as inference, without using a text.

Inference skills are one of the key skills required for reading comprehension. In fact according to Marzano (2010), inference is a “foundational skill”- a building block for higher-order thinking. If you have a reader that is struggling to comprehend what they’ve read beyond the literal, the chances are they’re struggling with inference. With that in mind, if they’re struggling to read for meaning in a comprehension, that applies to their understanding across all other subjects too.

Often children struggle to find evidence/proof from the text to back up their answer. My children, in particular, answer these questions in one of two ways.

1. Scan through the text looking for a key word from the question to copy and paste back into the answer. For example, the question asks “how does the work ‘cheerful’ make the reader feel?” They scan for where in the text it says ‘cheerful’ and copy and paste the sentence as their answer.
2. Write “I don’t know, it doesn’t say in the story”.

As stated above, they’re lacking the higher-order thinking skill. All they know is what the words tell them. They don’t and can’t look beyond the words because we haven’t given them the support to. It’s not an easy skill to teach, by any way, shape or form. But it has become my “baby” so to speak, to support and guide the children to approach inference style questions with a critical hat on, knowing that the answer won’t be in the words.

With that in mind, I decided this week to take the words away. If they’re so reliant on the words to find the answers, why not teach them the skill of inference through a map? This forces them to use the critical side of their brain and search for the answer through the information they’ve been given.

A point to note: this map is of the park close to our school to make it more interesting and contextual for the children.

I gave children this map between two and allowed them to explore it/discuss in pairs what they could see etc. Before delving into the tough stuff, I focused on some basic retrieval questions first to engage them with the map.

1. How many outdoor gyms are there in Aspire Park?
2. Which zone can ladies and girls not go to?
3. Which running track is the longest?

These basic retrieval questions not only engage children with the map, but also work on their ability to read a map. It may surprise you as to who doesn’t understand how to read a map.

Following some discussion on that, it was time to move on to inferring information from this map. Children remained in pairs for this activity, as talking aloud can help to develop their critical thinking skills in itself.

The question: Find evidence from this map to tell me why this park is not suitable for dogs to be off their lead.

To promote discussion, they are not allowed write for three minutes. We call this “three minutes thinking time”.

This process is not an “over-night fix” to helping your child with inference skills, it’s simply a strategy to help them to get used to this style of question. Some of my children still produced answers like this:

This park is not suitable for dogs because dogs shouldn’t be allowed in parks.

*The amazon link is an AF link!