We’ve been reviewing Dr. Goodreader as we near the end of the school year. Today we talked about inferences. First, we discussed types of inferences:
- Inferring word meaning from context clues,
- Pronoun resolution: For example, who does “he” refer to?,
- Anaphoric resolution: For example, knowing that computer and Dell refer to the same thing.,
- Predictions: inferring what may happen (these need to be reasonable, but it is not necessary that they are accurate),
- Who’s talking inferences: determing the speaker when dialogue isn’t labeled,
- Spatial inferences: inferring the spatial relationships of people and things,
- Cause inferences: inferring the cause of an event,
- Time inferences: inferring where you are in time whether involving flashbacks and flashforwards or simply a straight timeline,
- Emotional inferences: inferring the characters’ feelings and emotions or what happened given the feelings and emotions of the character,
- Stretching inferences: inferring the “whys” and the “what-do-you-think-happens-after-the-book-ends”,
- Authorial inferences: why do you think the author wrote this the way he/she did?
We didn’t call them by these names, necessarily. We gave examples from books we’ve read and are reading. Then we discussed WHY good readers make inferences. I thought the kids came up with a pretty good list:
- To be more involved in the book (especially with predictions),
- To understand the book,
- To learn about people,
- To learn about writing.