Making Inferences

How to make an educated guess to get information from

a piece of writing

What is an inference?

To infer means to use your schema and evidence from the text to figure something

out.

Schema

Schema means the “stuff” you already know.

*It is also known as “background knowledge.”

Evidence

Evidence is clues you see or read in the text.

So basically what we’re saying is…

You can use your background knowledge and evidence from the text to “read between the lines.”

Let’s try some together!

Read each of the following passages closely (you may need to read them twice).

Then, use your schema and text-based evidence to make inferences and answer the questions that follow.

A New Game

James Naismith had a problem. He was a new sports coach at a school in Springfield, Massachusetts. The young men he taught liked football and baseball, but now it was December, and too cold for outdoor sports. Naismith’s players thought the gym exercises were boring, so he decided that a new indoor team sport was the answer. He had an idea! Two boxes would be nailed up on poles at each end of the gym, as goals for players to throw a ball into. Naismith’s young men liked the new game. It soon spread across America and then the world. But it was never played as Naismith had planned it. When the first game was played, he couldn’t find any boxes of the right size, so he used peach baskets instead. Naismith’s game might otherwise be known today as “boxball”!

A New Game

1. What was Naismith’s new game?

2. What was Naismith worried might happen to the young men on his team over the winter?

3. If Naismith had lived in California or Florida, would he have invented his game?

Mary’s Scary Story

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was the young wife of the famous poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. One year they were vacationing in Switzerland with their friend Lord Byron, another famous poet. They were staying at an ancient castle by a lake. One dark and storm night, the three of them were sitting up late and talking. Byron suggested that they each write a scary story. Mary Shelley went to her room wondering what to write about. Suddenly, she remembered a dream she once had about a scientist who created a monster. She worked on her story all night. The next day, she read what she had written to her husband and their friend. No one today remembers the stories the two famous poets wrote that night. But Mary Shelley’s story, published in 1817, is still a favorite. The story was called Frankenstein.

Mary’s Scary Story

1. Was Mary Shelley well known as a writer before she wrote Frankenstein?

2. Why did Byron want to write scary stories on this particular night?

3. How did Mary Shelley get the idea for her story?

The Dinosaur That Wasn’t

Dinosaur bones were discovered early in the 1800s. No one knew what they were. People thought they were just big animals like the animals they knew already. In 1841, an English scientist suggested that these bones weren’t like any living animals. He called the animals Dinosaurs.

In 1877 in Colorado, scientists found a dinosaur skeleton. They named it Apatosaurus. Two years later in Wyoming, another dinosaur skeleton was found. They named the second skeleton Brontosaurus.

Children loved to learn about Brontosaurus, whose feet must have made a sound like thunder when it walked. But in 1903, another scientist made a discovery. He proved that the skeletons of Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus were the same. There was one dinosaur, not two! Brontosaurus was the dinosaur that wasn’t!

The Dinosaur That Wasn’t

1. How similar were Brontosaurs and Apatosaurus?

2. What can you guess about Apatosaurus because of its size?

3. Are scientists always sure of what they know?

As you continue to make inferences, remember…