Lesson length30 min 45 min 60 min

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English lesson plan · 5th grade (Year 6 in England) · 45 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 · 5 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.

The ice cream dripped down Lucy's arm. The sun beat down on the beach. What will probably happen to the ice cream? (It will grow. / It will melt. / It will freeze. / It will get colder.) → It will melt.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 falling asleep. / Theo is running a race. / Theo is hungry. / Theo is very excited.) → Theo is falling asleep.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? (The sandwich will fly away by itself. / It will start to snow. / Ben will plant a tree. / The seagull will grab the sandwich.) → The seagull will grab the sandwich.Prompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.

Hook · 5 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 · 10 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 · 10 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? (It is raining outside. / Grace has been asleep. / Grace has been reading. / 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? (Tariq got full marks. / Tariq did not do well. / The test was cancelled. / Tariq's dad wrote the test.) → Tariq did not do well.Prompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.

You do: independent practice · 10 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 8 questions are on the student sheet below, with answers in the key.

Exit ticket · 5 min

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

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

Name

Date

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My Grandmother's Hands

My grandmother's hands are brown and wrinkled, like a map of rivers that have been flowing for eighty years. When I was small, I used to trace the lines with my finger and ask her where each one went. "This one," she would say, pointing to a deep crease across her palm, "goes back to the farm where I grew up, where I picked cotton until my fingers bled." Then she would point to a thin white scar on her thumb. "And this one leads to the night I learned to cook for eight brothers and sisters." Her hands have kneaded thousands of loaves of bread. They have stitched every quilt in our house and plaited my hair before every first day of school. They once caught my baby brother when he slipped from the top of the slide, faster than anyone thought an old woman could move. These days her hands shake a little when she holds her teacup. Sometimes she drops a stitch and has to start a row again. But when she takes my hands in hers, they are still the strongest hands I know.

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Question 1
Read "My Grandmother's Hands". What does the story about the slide show about Grandmother?
- A. She was frightened of slides.
- B. She was quick and protective when it mattered.
- C. She was always slow.
- D. She did not like the baby.

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 2
Read "Lady Montagu and the Smallpox Gamble". Why did Montagu have her daughter variolated in front of royal physicians?
- A. because her daughter was ill
- B. because the law required it
- C. to test Jenner's vaccine
- D. to prove the method was safe and gain trust

The Phone-Free Lunch Experiment

For one month, students at Brookfield School tried something unusual: no phones at lunch. Phones stayed in lockers from twelve until one, and the dining hall filled with board games, sketchbooks and a lot more noise. The idea came from the student council. In a survey, 61 per cent of students said they spent most of lunch looking at a screen, and many said they wanted a break but found it hard to stop on their own. At first, not everyone was happy. "I thought it was a punishment," admitted Jaden, 12. "But after a week I'd learned to play chess, and now I actually look forward to lunch." Teachers noticed changes too. Ms Ortega, who supervises the hall, said there were fewer arguments and more students sitting in mixed groups. However, some students said they missed messaging family members during the day. The council will now vote on whether to keep the rule. One suggestion is a compromise: phone-free Mondays to Thursdays, with Fridays left free.

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Question 3
Read "The Phone-Free Lunch Experiment". Why might the council consider the 'compromise'?
- A. because phones were broken
- B. because nobody liked the rule
- C. to keep the benefits while answering students who wanted to contact family
- D. because teachers asked for longer lunches

The Vault at the Top of the World

On a frozen island in the Arctic Ocean, between Norway and the North Pole, a narrow concrete doorway sticks out of the side of a mountain. Behind it, a tunnel leads deep into the rock. This is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, and it holds more than a million packets of seeds from almost every country on Earth. Why keep seeds in a mountain? Farmers all over the world depend on many different varieties of crops, such as types of rice that survive floods or kinds of wheat that resist disease. If a variety disappears because of war, natural disaster or simple accident, it may be lost for ever. The vault is a back-up copy, like saving a precious file in two places. The location was chosen with care. The vault is high enough above sea level to stay dry even if ice caps melt. Inside, the seeds are kept at about minus 18 degrees Celsius, cold enough to keep many of them alive for decades or even centuries. The surrounding rock is permanently frozen, so even if the power failed, the seeds would stay cold. The vault opened in 2008. In 2015, it was used for the first time: scientists who had lost access to their own seed bank during a war in Syria withdrew samples, grew new plants and later sent fresh seeds back to the vault. The back-up had worked. No one hopes the vault will be needed often. But like a fire extinguisher in a school corridor, it is reassuring to know it is there.

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Question 4
Read "The Vault at the Top of the World". Why does the writer compare the vault to a fire extinguisher?
- A. Both are used every day.
- B. Both are found in schools.
- C. Both are kept ready for an emergency, and we hope not to need them often.
- D. Both are red and heavy.

Message in a Bottle (a poem)

I am a bottle, empty and light, tossed from a boat on a bright summer night. No note inside me, no secret to tell, just plastic and air and a sea-salty smell. The ocean is patient, the ocean is wide; it rocks me and rolls me from tide to tide. A turtle swims near me and stares at my shine. I am not a jellyfish. Please, don't you dine! I'll drift for a lifetime, I'll drift for a few, I'll crumble to pieces too tiny for you. But somebody somewhere could carry me back, a hand on the beach and a bin in a sack. So here is my message, though no one wrote it: the sea keeps whatever we throw. Don't forget it.

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Question 5
Read "Message in a Bottle (a poem)". Why does the bottle say, "I am not a jellyfish. Please, don't you dine!"?
- A. Turtles are afraid of bottles.
- B. Turtles can mistake shiny plastic for jellyfish and eat it.
- C. The bottle wants to be eaten.
- D. Jellyfish live inside bottles.

The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter

The storm had been building all afternoon. By the time the sun set, waves as tall as houses were hurling themselves against the rocks below Gull Point Lighthouse, and the wind screamed around the tower like a wild animal. Nell pressed her face to the window of the little cottage. Her father had rowed to the mainland that morning to fetch the doctor for Mrs Penrose, and the sea had turned before he could return. Now, for the first time in her twelve years, Nell was alone at the lighthouse. She knew what that meant. Every night at dusk, the great lamp at the top of the tower had to be lit. Without it, ships would have no warning of the rocks. Nell grabbed the lantern and her father's oilskin coat, which hung down past her knees, and pushed open the door. The wind nearly knocked her flat. Bent double, she stumbled across the yard and into the tower. There were one hundred and twelve steps to the top. Nell had climbed them hundreds of times, but never in the dark, never with the whole tower trembling. Halfway up, her lantern flickered and almost went out. She stopped, cupped her hand around the flame and whispered, "Not now. Please, not now." At the top, her fingers were numb with cold. She trimmed the wick the way her father had shown her, filled the oil and struck a match. Nothing. A second match. Nothing. With the third, a tiny flame caught, grew and then blazed, and the great lens began to turn, sweeping its beam across the furious sea. Far out in the darkness, a ship's horn sounded twice. Nell did not know whose ship it was. But she knew that, tonight, it would find its way home.

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Question 6
Read "The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter". Why did Nell whisper "Not now. Please, not now"?
- A. She had forgotten the matches.
- B. She wanted the storm to stop.
- C. She was afraid the lantern would go out.
- D. She was talking to her father.

The Kite Festival

Amara had spent three weeks building her kite. She had bent the bamboo sticks, stretched the paper tight and painted a fierce golden dragon across the front. It was going to win the prize for best design at the town's kite festival. She was sure of it. On the morning of the festival, the field was crowded with families. Kites shaped like fish, birds and boats bobbed in the breeze. Amara's little brother, Kofi, trailed behind her, clutching a small diamond kite he had made from a plastic bag and two straws. "Mine's not very good," Kofi mumbled. Amara ran, and her dragon rose beautifully – until a sudden gust snapped one of the bamboo sticks. The kite twisted, spun and crashed into the grass. The paper ripped right through the dragon's face. Amara's eyes stung. Three weeks of work, ruined in three seconds. Kofi tugged her sleeve. "You can fly mine with me," he offered. At first Amara shook her head. Then she looked at Kofi's hopeful face and took the string. Together they ran, and the little plastic kite shot up higher than any other kite in the sky. People pointed and cheered. That afternoon, the judges gave Kofi a ribbon for "Highest Flyer". Amara clapped louder than anyone. She realised she was smiling more than she would have if she had won the prize herself.

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Question 7
Read "The Kite Festival". Why did Amara's eyes sting?
- A. The wind was full of dust.
- B. She was close to crying.
- C. She had paint in them.
- D. The sun was too bright.

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 8
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 are better at gluing.
- D. Adults choose the robot's name.

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Answer key: Making inferences

1. B. She was quick and protective when it mattered.
2. D. to prove the method was safe and gain trust
3. C. to keep the benefits while answering students who wanted to contact family
4. C. Both are kept ready for an emergency, and we hope not to need them often.
5. B. Turtles can mistake shiny plastic for jellyfish and eat it.
6. C. She was afraid the lantern would go out.
7. B. She was close to crying.
8. B. Cutting with scissors can be tricky or unsafe.