Teaching Inference

Last night while reading Zion his bedtime stories, I had an epiphany for a lesson on how to teach inference. We were reading "Good Night, Gorilla" by Peggy Rathmann, which is similar to "Goodnight Moon." At any rate, some of the pages didn't have words (well I think I can write a children's book!), so I started making up things to say. For example, the zookeeper husband didn't know the animals were out and had followed him home, right into his bedroom. The wife had to get up while the husband was asleep and walk the animals back to the zoo. As she's walking, her head and shoulders were drooping, and all the animals were in single file trudging along right behind her. There were no words on this page. So I said, "He always do this. Why do I have to be the one to take these animals back? How many times have I told him to check his keys because that gorilla is sneaky?!?" In the book, the gorilla steals the zookeeper husband's keys and lets out the animals after he passes telling them, "Good night."

Once we finished reading, the idea came to me that this would be a great activity to help students develop their inference skills. I could give them a picture from a children's book or any picture without words and tell them to create the story using what they see. It would be interesting to hear what the students come up with.

I'm sure this idea isn't new, but I've never tried it before and my students always struggle with making inferences.

I'll try this next year and report back on how well it goes.