Teaching and learning about inference is a tricky thing. It is not my intention here to explain how to teach it, but to provide a helpful list of playful ways to introduce or explore this concept. Almost all of these can be used with any age across the school, simply by modifying the texts or objects used.
MENTOR TEXTS
Inference is most commonly taught as a reading skill, so it makes sense to use a range of high quality texts to support students to develop or hone this skill. There are so many great books to use, and countless blog posts dedicated to them, so I will just share my favourite.
Who saw Turtle? by Ros Moriarty is a wonderful book which I believe can be used at any level, but the final inference may be difficult for younger readers to articulate on their own without support. This book is also wonderful for talking about descriptive words as well. As a bonus, selecting texts by First Nations authors or illustrators is a great way to embed First Nations’ perspectives in your classroom.
MOVIES
Again, there are countless blog posts dedicated to listing great movie clips which can be used for teaching or exploring inference. Pixar shorts are great as they often feature no dialogue so almost everything we know about what happens in the clip comes from inference.
Taking advantage of student interest (and for my own enjoyment!) Bluey episodes feature some great opportunities for drawing inferences, as do many children's programs, here are a couple of my favourites. The episode Fairies ends with Bingo calling Dad into the playroom. A question to guide inference would be, “Did Dad see the fairy?” In the episode Swim School, Bingo asks, “Why is the water warm here?” that could bring a few laughs!
PICTURE PROMPTS
There are some wonderful images available to use for drawing inferences. Almost any picture can be used and some great ones allow for multiple interpretations, the important thing is for children to be able to justify their reasoning.
The What’s going on in this picture? series from the New York Times is a great resource for this.
PLAY BASED INFERENCE ACTIVITIES
The above activities are great and they are what most people think of when planning for teaching inference. Here are a few play based activities which can be modified to suit any age.
Heads Up
Games like Heads Up, or Hedbanz encourage children to make inferences about what card they have based on the answers given to them by the other children. You could even modify this to include words or images relevant to your current Inquiry or topic.
Whose bag is this?
This can take a few forms. Essentially there is a bag containing items and based on those items you infer who the bag belongs to. There are so many ways to do this including:
Story characters. This may be difficult unless you use characters from stories you have read together in class. Fairytales and nursery rhymes are not common across all cultures. It is a good chance to include some bookish play in your literacy program!
Teachers in the school. Ask teachers to place a few items in a bag and see if children can infer which teacher it belongs to. Could be framed as a mystery and by figuring it out they can return the missing bag to the teacher. Anyone who has played Animal Crossing: New Horizons will be familiar with this concept, a villager loses an item (book, bag, etc) and based on a brief description of the item the player needs to work out who it belongs to and return it to them.
Professions. Place items in a bag and ask what job the owner of this bag might have.
A spin on this I have seen is the Missing Camera. Show a few pictures (e.g. airport, looking out a plane window, on top of a mountain) what can you infer about the person the camera belongs to?
*As a side note, we should be talking about inference, or inferring, not inferencing which isn’t really a word, although it seems to be becoming so through common misuse!
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