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English lesson plan · 5th grade (Year 6 in England) · 30 minutes

Making inferences

Reading Comprehension

CCSS RL.5.1CCSS RI.5.1England: Y5/6 Reading (inference)England: KS2 SATs ReadingEngland: 11+ English

Objective and success criteria

Students will: Making inferences.

I can answer questions on today's skill on my own, without help.
I can explain each step and say why it works.
I can check my answer and spot a mistake.

Before and after

Needs first: Predicting and simple inference

Leads to: Citing textual evidence; Tone and mood; Implicit meaning and inference

Materials: A short text or extract (one copy each), Highlighters, Question cards, Mini whiteboards, A short model text on the board, Printed student sheet (below).

Warm-up · 4 min

Quick retrieval from earlier learning (Predicting and simple inference). Students answer on mini whiteboards.
Show answers together and note who needs support in the main task.

Omar's mum put a cake with seven candles on the table. Everyone began to sing. What is probably happening? (The family is moving house. / Omar is ill. / It is a school day. / It is Omar's birthday.) → It is Omar's birthday.Prompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.
Ben left his sandwich on the picnic blanket. A seagull circled overhead. What will probably happen next? (Ben will plant a tree. / The sandwich will fly away by itself. / It will start to snow. / The seagull will grab the sandwich.) → The seagull will grab the sandwich.Prompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.
Theo yawned and rubbed his eyes. His book slipped onto the floor. What is probably happening? (Theo is running a race. / Theo is falling asleep. / Theo is hungry. / Theo is very excited.) → Theo is falling asleep.Prompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.

Hook · 3 min

Read the first lines of a short text aloud and ask what students predict will happen and why.
Share the objective: Making inferences. Read the success criteria together.

I do: model it · 7 min

Work through the example out loud, saying why you do each step, not just what you do.
Example: The house was silent. Dust covered the furniture, and cobwebs hung from every corner. What can you infer about the house?
Step 1: An inference combines clues in the text with what you know.
Step 2: So the answer is: Nobody has lived there for a long time.
Answer: Nobody has lived there for a long time.
Pause after each step and ask a student to say what comes next.

We do: guided practice · 6 min

Do these together. Students try each step on whiteboards before you reveal it.
Use the hints as prompts rather than giving the answer.

When Grace walked in, her hair was dripping and her shoes squelched on the floor. What can you infer? (Grace has been asleep. / Grace has been reading. / It is raining outside. / It is a hot, sunny day.) → It is raining outside.Prompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.
Tariq stared at his test paper, then crumpled it up and pushed it to the bottom of his bag before his dad could see. What can you infer about the test? (The test was cancelled. / Tariq's dad wrote the test. / Tariq did not do well. / Tariq got full marks.) → Tariq did not do well.Prompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.

You do: independent practice · 7 min

Students work on the student sheet. Circulate and check the first two answers of every student early.
Students who finish: write a question of their own for a partner, with the answer.

The 6 questions are on the student sheet below, with answers in the key.

Exit ticket · 3 min

Two questions on their own. Sort answers into got it / nearly / not yet to plan the next lesson.

The coach blew the whistle, and the players trudged off the field, heads down, while the other team cheered. What can you infer? (The players won. / The match was cancelled. / The players are going to start playing. / The players lost the match.) → The players lost the match.Prompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.

Watch out for

Answering from memory or opinion instead of evidence in the text.
Copying a long quote without explaining what it shows.

Support and stretch

Support

Review first: Predicting and simple inference.
Use concrete materials: a short text or extract (one copy each).
Give the first step of each question, or a partly worked example to finish.
Pair with a confident partner for the guided practice.

Stretch

Move on to: Citing textual evidence; Tone and mood; Implicit meaning and inference.
Explain a common mistake in writing and how to fix it.
Write a word problem that uses today's skill, then solve a partner's.

Homework and more practice

Free online practice with hints and printable worksheets for this skill: eurekami.com/english/grade-5.

Free lesson plan from eurekami.com/lesson-plan-builder

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Making inferences

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The Mapmaker's Apprentice

Ines had worked in Master Corvo's shop for three years, and in all that time he had never let her draw a single line on a real map. She ground his inks, stretched his parchment and swept up the shavings from his quills. When she asked why she could not draw, he only said, "A mapmaker must first learn to see." So Ines watched. She watched sailors come in, sunburnt and impatient, to buy charts of the southern coast. She watched merchants argue over which mountain pass was fastest. Most of all, she watched Master Corvo, who spent far longer listening to travellers than he did holding his pen. One winter morning, a fisherman stumbled into the shop, soaked and shaking. A storm had pushed his boat far north, past the edge of every chart in the city. He had found a narrow channel between two islands that no map showed, and it had saved his life. Master Corvo was in bed with a fever. The fisherman was leaving on the evening tide. Ines hesitated only for a moment. Then she sat the fisherman by the fire and asked him questions — not just where the channel was, but how the water changed colour near the rocks, where the gulls gathered, how long it took to row from one island to the other. She wrote down every answer. Only when she had heard everything did she pick up a pen. When Master Corvo recovered, she laid the new chart in front of him. He studied it for a long time without speaking. Then he took his own pen, signed his name in the corner, and beneath it, for the first time, he wrote hers.

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Question 1
Read "The Mapmaker's Apprentice". Why did Ines have to act quickly?
- A. The fisherman was leaving that evening and Master Corvo was ill.
- B. A storm was coming to the city.
- C. The shop was about to close forever.
- D. Merchants were waiting for the map.

How to Build a Junk Robot

Do you have a pile of empty boxes and bottle tops? Instead of throwing them away, turn them into a robot! This project takes about an hour. You will need: one cereal box, one smaller box (such as a toothpaste box), four cardboard tubes, bottle tops, glue, scissors and some tape. Step 1: Ask an adult to help you cut a hole in the top of the cereal box. This will be the robot's body. Step 2: Glue the smaller box on top of the body to make the head. Hold it in place for a minute while the glue sets. Step 3: Tape two cardboard tubes to the sides of the body for arms and two to the bottom for legs. Step 4: Glue bottle tops onto the head for eyes and onto the body for buttons and dials. Step 5: Leave your robot to dry overnight before you play with it. Top tip: Give your robot a name and write it on a label. Robots with names are much more fun!

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Question 2
Read "How to Build a Junk Robot". Why should you ask an adult to help with Step 1?
- A. The box is too heavy.
- B. Cutting with scissors can be tricky or unsafe.
- C. Adults choose the robot's name.
- D. Adults are better at gluing.

The Long Wall

The Great Wall of China is not one wall at all. It is a network of walls, trenches and watchtowers built and rebuilt over more than two thousand years by different dynasties. If all its sections were laid end to end, they would stretch over 21,000 kilometres – more than half the distance around the Earth. The earliest walls were built from packed earth around the seventh century BCE, when rival Chinese states defended their borders from one another. In about 220 BCE, the first emperor of a united China, Qin Shi Huang, ordered many of these separate walls to be joined together to protect the north from raiding groups. The sections that most visitors see today are far younger. They were built during the Ming dynasty, between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ming builders used bricks and stone, which is why these sections have survived so well. Watchtowers were placed close enough together for soldiers to send signals using smoke by day and fire by night. The wall came at a terrible cost. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers, prisoners and farmers were forced to work on it, often in freezing mountains or burning deserts. Many died, and stories and songs about their suffering are still told. Did the wall work? Historians disagree. It slowed down small raids and helped control trade and travel, but determined armies could still break through or simply go around it. Today, its greatest power may be as a symbol – of human effort, of history and of a nation's identity.

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Question 3
Read "The Long Wall". Why were watchtowers placed close together?
- A. to make the wall look taller
- B. so soldiers could sleep in them
- C. to save bricks
- D. so signals could be seen from one tower to the next

Lady Montagu and the Smallpox Gamble

In the early eighteenth century, smallpox was one of the most feared diseases in Europe. It killed around three in every ten people it infected and left many survivors scarred or blind. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu knew its cruelty personally: the disease had killed her brother and marked her own face. In 1717, while living in Constantinople (now Istanbul), where her husband was the British ambassador, she observed a remarkable practice. Local women would take a small amount of material from a mild smallpox sore and scratch it into the skin of a healthy person. The person usually developed a mild illness and was then protected for life. This process was called variolation. Montagu was so impressed that she had her young son variolated. When she returned to England, she campaigned to spread the practice, despite fierce opposition. Some doctors resented being taught by a woman; others distrusted a practice from abroad. To win public confidence, Montagu had her daughter variolated in front of physicians from the royal court. Variolation was not without risk: a small number of patients developed severe smallpox, and they could infect others. Decades later, in 1796, Edward Jenner developed a safer method using cowpox, a related but much milder disease. His method, called vaccination after the Latin word for cow, gradually replaced variolation. Smallpox was declared eradicated worldwide in 1980. Jenner is often called the father of vaccination, but the story began with the courage of a woman who noticed what others had overlooked.

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Question 4
Read "Lady Montagu and the Smallpox Gamble". Why did Montagu have her daughter variolated in front of royal physicians?
- A. to test Jenner's vaccine
- B. because the law required it
- C. to prove the method was safe and gain trust
- D. because her daughter was ill

The Clever Octopus

If you wanted to design an intelligent animal from scratch, you probably would not start with a creature that has no bones, three hearts and blue blood. Yet the octopus is one of the most remarkable problem-solvers in the animal kingdom. In laboratories, octopuses have learned to unscrew jar lids to reach crabs inside. Some have escaped from their tanks at night, crept across the floor to a neighbouring tank to eat the fish, and then returned home before morning. In the wild, veined octopuses have been filmed collecting coconut shells, carrying them across the seabed and assembling them into a portable shelter – one of the few known examples of tool use by an invertebrate. What makes this intelligence so surprising is how different the octopus brain is from ours. About two-thirds of its roughly 500 million nerve cells are not in its head at all but in its eight arms. Each arm can taste, touch and even make simple decisions on its own. Scientists are still debating what it might feel like to be an animal whose thinking is spread throughout its body. The octopus's cleverness may be linked to its lifestyle. Without a shell for protection, it must outwit predators by hiding, changing colour in a fraction of a second, or squeezing through gaps no bigger than its beak. Survival depends on flexible thinking. Strangely, most octopuses live only one or two years. They have no parents to teach them and usually die soon after laying eggs. Every skill they show, they must largely work out for themselves.

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Question 5
Read "The Clever Octopus". What does the final paragraph suggest about octopus intelligence?
- A. Octopuses live longer than most animals.
- B. Octopuses learn everything from their parents.
- C. Octopuses are not really intelligent.
- D. It is especially impressive because octopuses learn without being taught.

The Fennec Fox

The fennec fox is the smallest fox in the world. It weighs about as much as a bag of sugar. It lives in the Sahara Desert in North Africa, one of the hottest places on Earth. The first thing most people notice about the fennec fox is its enormous ears. They can be as long as 15 centimetres, which is huge for such a small animal. The ears do two important jobs. First, they let heat escape from the fox's body, helping it to stay cool. Second, they are so sensitive that the fox can hear insects moving under the sand. The fennec fox has other ways to survive in the desert, too. Thick fur on the bottoms of its feet protects it from the burning sand. During the hottest part of the day, it rests in a cool burrow underground. It comes out to hunt at night, when the air is cooler. Water is hard to find in the desert, but the fennec fox can go a long time without drinking. It gets most of the water it needs from the food it eats, such as insects, plants and small animals.

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Question 6
Read "The Fennec Fox". Why does the fennec fox hunt at night?
- A. It cannot see in daylight.
- B. The air is cooler then.
- C. It sleeps in trees during the day.
- D. Its prey only comes out in the day.

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Answer key: Making inferences

1. A. The fisherman was leaving that evening and Master Corvo was ill.
2. B. Cutting with scissors can be tricky or unsafe.
3. D. so signals could be seen from one tower to the next
4. C. to prove the method was safe and gain trust
5. D. It is especially impressive because octopuses learn without being taught.
6. B. The air is cooler then.