3.1 Use a Picture to Introduce the Concept of Inferencing

For younger children or students who may struggle with inferencing, using pictures alone, with no text, is a great way to introduce the concept. This activity is not connected to any reading passage. We use it to practice the process of inferencing in isolation. 

Step 1: Preparing for the Lesson with a Familiar Picture

Prepare for the lesson by selecting and printing out a picture of an object that most of your students are familiar with. We’ll use a raccoon as an example here.

Use a window template or sticky notes to cover up most of the picture, so that students only see a small portion. Then post the picture in a place that is visible for all students.

Step 2: Introducing the Lesson and Explaining Inferencing

Explain to students that today they’ll be learning about inferencing, which means making thoughtful guesses about something using …

• What we hear or read
• What we see
• What we already know 

Inferencing allows us to make meaning of things even when we don’t have all of the information.

Tell your students that their job is to use inferencing to guess who or what is in the picture.

Draw a three-column table on the whiteboard (the graphic organizer we introduced in module 3.0) and use a picture of a book, an eye, and a thought bubble to represent those three sources of information. Use the table to capture students' responses as you complete the exercise.

Explain to students that in this exercise you will only use a picture as your source of information … no reading. Since we won’t get information in a text, write an “X” or “no information” in the column “no information” in the first column, the one with a book in the header.

Step 3: Making Connections with the Picture

Ask students to describe what they see in the picture. With this picture, students might say outdoors, grass, tree, ears, animal, gray, or fur. Go ahead and write these words in your graphic organizer in the second column, under the eyes.

When students name something specific, ask them to explain what they used to figure that out. For example, “I see grass, so I bet the picture is of the outside.”

Step 4: Making Connections with New Information

Uncover more of the picture and prompt students to piece together new information with old.

• Ask students again to describe what they see. Answers for this picture could be fingers, claws, fluffy fur, outdoors, or nature. 
• Write the students’ answers in the graphic organizer in the second column. Have students explain how what they know about the things they see (leaves, sharp claws, etc.) helps them make guesses about the picture (it’s outdoors, this is an animal, etc.).
• Ask students what new piece of information is revealed by the larger image that they can connect to earlier information to narrow down their conclusion. For example, “Those aren’t dog or bear paws, so I think it’s not a dog or bear.”
• Then ask them to try naming what the picture is showing using the additional information. If they guess animal sitting, bear, cat, squirrel, or even raccoon, point out that they have used two pieces of information within the picture and their background knowledge about animals to infer what the picture may be.

Step 5: Making Inferences

Finally, reveal the whole picture and students to make an inference. You may:

• Have students name the animal in the picture and what they think the animal is doing. 
• Ask them to identify the new information that helps them to know that it is a raccoon, such as its eyes. 
• Discuss the guesses that they made earlier and compare them to the full picture. 
• Draw attention to the responses that students gave when they relied on their background knowledge, referring back to the graphic organizer.  
• Ask students to determine which was the correct inference and circle it on the graphic organizer.

Step 6: Guiding Student Practice

Repeat the exercise with several pictures so that students can have time to practice using this process to make thoughtful guesses. Continue to emphasize the three sources of information: text, visuals, and background knowledge. Make a special effort to have students use their background knowledge to make the inference.