Learning to make inferences at a young age is essential as this helps students develop critical thinking skills, understand complex texts, and solve problems. By inferring, students can grasp unstated meanings and draw conclusions from evidence.
To help our fifth and sixth graders develop this critical skill, we started a two-week reading unit that focuses on fostering students’ inference-making abilities, and together, we are learning to “read between the lines”. So far, the students have been doing great, and seeing them realize that there’s often more to a text that meets the eye is, to be honest, pretty cute!