Teacher background

Teaching Tips: Inference
This Web site from the eMints National Center for professional development programs offers links to activity ideas, lesson plans, and graphic organizers designed to help teach inferencing skills.

Inferring Handout
This link leads to a handout on inferring written by a teacher, from the Mosaic Listserve Web site.

Comprehension Lesson Plan: Guess the Covered Word
This decoding lesson teaches students how to look for clues in text to decode words and make inferences about word meaning.
From Lafayette Elementary School

Student Activity Sites

George Washington: A National Treasure is an interactive version of the official portrait of George Washington in the National Gallery. Students use clues in the portrait to infer things about Washington and his life. A great way to connect to art and social studies as students practice inferring skills. A teacher guide and additional materials for older students are also found on the site.
From the Smithsonian Institute

Inferring How and Why Characters Change
This lesson uses a think-aloud procedure to model how to infer character traits and recognize a character's growth across a text. Students also consider the underlying reasons why the character has changed and learn to support those inferences with evidence from the text.
From Read-Write-Think, the International Reading Association

Character Trading Cards
The Character Trading Cards tool allows students to create their own character cards, which they can then print off, illustrate, and trade or keep. Students will need to infer to describe a character, look at his or her thoughts and feelings, explore how he or she develops, and make personal connections to the character.
From Read-Write-Think, the International Reading Association

Book Cover Creator
This online tool allows students to create book covers and print them out. After looking at a number of book covers and inferring things about the book, your students can create their own book covers that allow the reader to infer important ideas about the book.
From Read-Write-Think, the International Reading Association

Eye on Idioms
Eye on Idioms can be used to practice inferring using the study of seven idioms. After viewing the literal representation of each idiom, students are asked to use context clues to determine the metaphorical meaning of the idiom.
From Read-Write-Think, the International Reading Association

What's in the Bag?
This can be used as a very simple online inferring activity for young students. Students are presented with three clues, which they use to guess what is in the bag.
From Read-Write-Think, the International Reading Association

Exploring the Subtext Strategy: Thinking Beyond the Text
In this lesson, students in grades 2-4 take the perspectives of various characters in a story and think beyond the written text. Students act as the assigned characters and express their interpretations of the characters' thoughts and feelings using visual cues from the illustrations and the information in the text.
From Read-Write-Think, the International Reading Association

Author Study: Improving Reading Comprehension Using Inference and Comparison
In this lesson, students in grades 3-5 review several texts by one illustrator/author, practice making inferences about that author, and then check their inferences against the author's biography.
From Read-Write-Think, the International Reading Association