The EEF KS2 Literacy Guidance document states that "reading comprehension can be improved by teaching pupils specific strategies that they can apply both to monitor and overcome barriers to comprehension". It goes on to say "strategies should be modelled and practised to ensure they become embedded and fluent". It concludes that "The potential impact of these approaches is very high, but can be hard to achieve, since pupils are required to take greater responsibility for their own learning. This requires them to learn three things: what the strategy is, how the strategy is used, and why and when to use the strategy. Developing each of the strategies requires explicit instruction and extensive practice".
In order for children to make inferences independently the EEF's gradual release of responsibility model is useful. It describes how greater responsibility for using these strategies can be transferred to the pupil:
1. an explicit description of the strategy and when and how it should be used;
2. modelling of the strategy in action by teachers and/or pupils;
3. collaborative use of the strategy in action;
4. guided practice using the strategy with gradual release of responsibility; and
5. independent use of the strategy.
In my last blog post 'Reading Comprehension: A Structured Way Of Teaching Inference-Making' I concluded that children will probably benefit best from having the chance to practise specific inferences based on the different types of inference-making listed above. If teachers can provide questions that are of a similar structure, and provide structures for the answers too, then children who are at the learning stage of inference-making might have a better of chance of being able to make inferences whenever they are reading.
With this in mind, here is a taster of the inference question foci that might help teachers to structure their lessons and questioning more carefully in a way that allows them to model particular skills which the children can then practise.
To get the full set of question and answer stems, including exemplar lesson resources, download this resource:
Making an inference about actions
Ask questions about:
how a character feels
why a character feels a particular way
why a character acts/behaves in a certain way (motives)
why a character says certain things (motives)
why a character says things in a certain way (motives)
why a character does things in a certain way (motives)
what a character thinks
why a character thinks/believes/expects (etc) certain things
Questions may be framed in many different ways. Here are some examples, given in an order that might allow gradual transfer of responsibility to children. I suggest this sequence of questions takes place over a series of lessons, rather than in just one lesson, especially where written answers are required:
<quote from text> This tells is that x feels... <multiple choice answers>
Provide a quote from the text that children can infer information from, provide a description of what is felt/said/done and then give a choice of possible inferences for children to choose from. Questions like this might be used more often with younger children. As exemplified in the 2017 KS2 Reading SAT below:
Character feels x. How do you know? Possible answer structure: In the text it says ________________. This shows the character feels x because _______________________.
Give a description of what is felt and ask for children to locate information that supports this theory. Children will probably benefit from being asked several questions with the exact same question and answer structure in order to practise based on what the teacher has modelled, as exemplified here:
This type of question is also exemplified in the 2017 KS2 Reading SAT below, where the cat is the character and the lack of enjoyment is the feeling and the request for three ways in which the cat shows this is in place of the How do you know? question:
How does x feel? What does x think? Explain your reasons. Possible answer structure: X feels ________________. I know this because in the text it says ________________. This shows the character thinks x because _______________________.
This is more difficult than the previous questions as the child has to do more: they have to find their own word to describe what is felt/thought etc and they have to support it with evidence from the text. Ensure that children are presented with several opportunities within a lesson to answer questions at this difficulty level - keep the lesson focused on this one question type. As exemplified in the 2017 KS2 Reading SAT below where the question asks about thoughts of expectation:
There are two further things which inferences can be made about:
Making an inference about events
Making an inference about state
For an in-depth breakdown of these types of inference, including exemplar question and answer stems (similar to as seen above for making inferences about actions), you will need to download this resource (which also features all the information about making inferences about actions):
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