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.

Omar's mum put a cake with seven candles on the table. Everyone began to sing. What is probably happening? (It is Omar's birthday. / It is a school day. / Omar is ill. / The family is moving house.) → It is Omar's birthday.Prompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.
Kim stepped up to the high board. Her knees shook as she looked down at the water. How does Kim feel? (bored / angry / sleepy / nervous) → nervousPrompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.
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 melt. / It will freeze. / It will grow. / It will get colder.) → It will melt.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.

Mr Patel glanced at the clock for the third time and tapped his foot. The bus was already twenty minutes late. How is Mr Patel feeling? (sleepy / relaxed / impatient / delighted) → impatientPrompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.
The house was silent. Dust covered the furniture, and cobwebs hung from every corner. What can you infer about the house? (It was cleaned this morning. / A party is happening. / It is brand new. / Nobody has lived there for a long time.) → Nobody has lived there for a long time.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.

The house was silent. Dust covered the furniture, and cobwebs hung from every corner. What can you infer about the house? (It is brand new. / It was cleaned this morning. / A party is happening. / Nobody has lived there for a long time.) → Nobody has lived there for a long time.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

Name

Date

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The Climbing Wall

The climbing wall at the leisure centre was twelve metres high, and from the bottom it looked like a mountain covered in brightly coloured sweets. Jaya had watched her older cousin, Ravi, scramble to the top of it a dozen times. Today was her first turn. The instructor clipped the rope to her harness and checked the knot twice. "Remember," she said, "use your legs, not just your arms. And don't look down until you're ready." The first few holds were easy. Jaya climbed quickly, buoyed by Ravi's cheers. But halfway up, the holds grew smaller and farther apart. Her arms began to burn. She looked down – and immediately wished she hadn't. The floor seemed impossibly far away, and her legs began to tremble. "I want to come down," she called. "You can," the instructor answered calmly. "Or you can rest. Lean back into the harness. The rope's got you." Jaya didn't believe her. But slowly, she let her weight sink back. The rope held. Her breathing steadied. She looked at the wall in front of her, not at the floor, and noticed a small yellow hold to her right that she hadn't seen before. Ten minutes later, she slapped the top of the wall. The leisure centre erupted in cheers – or at least Ravi did, which felt like the same thing.

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Question 1
Read "The Climbing Wall". Why did Jaya's legs begin to tremble?
- A. She was excited to reach the top.
- B. She looked down and became frightened.
- C. The rope broke.
- D. She was cold.

2
Question 2
When Grace walked in, her hair was dripping and her shoes squelched on the floor. What can you infer?
- A. It is a hot, sunny day.
- B. Grace has been asleep.
- C. It is raining outside.
- D. Grace has been reading.

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.

3
Question 3
Read "The Kite Festival". Why did Amara's eyes sting?
- A. She was close to crying.
- B. The sun was too bright.
- C. The wind was full of dust.
- D. She had paint in them.

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.

4
Question 4
Read "My Grandmother's Hands". What does the story about the slide show about Grandmother?
- A. She was quick and protective when it mattered.
- B. She was always slow.
- C. She was frightened of slides.
- D. She did not like the baby.

The Climbing Wall

5
Question 5
Read "The Climbing Wall". What is the tone of the final paragraph?
- A. frightening
- B. gloomy and regretful
- C. angry
- D. triumphant and lightly humorous

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.

6
Question 6
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. It is especially impressive because octopuses learn without being taught.
- D. Octopuses are not really intelligent.

Should Our School Keep Bees?

Letter A: Yes to bees! Our school should put two beehives on the flat roof above the library. Bees pollinate fruit, vegetables and wildflowers, and in many places their numbers have fallen. A school hive would give local bees a safe home. It would also turn our roof into a living science lesson: we could study how a colony works, measure how much honey it makes, and plant bee-friendly flowers in the playground. Several schools near us already keep bees, and the beekeepers say pupils are never near the hives, because the roof is locked. Letter B: Not so fast. I agree that bees are important, but I do not think hives are right for our school yet. Some pupils and staff are allergic to bee stings, and even a locked roof is close to open windows. Hives also need an expert to check them every week, and no one at school has that training. Instead, we could help bees in safer ways: plant a wildflower strip by the fence, build a bug hotel, and invite a beekeeper to visit with an observation hive behind glass. If, after a year, we find a trained volunteer, we could think about hives again.

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Question 7
Read "Should Our School Keep Bees?". What would most likely change the writer of Letter B's mind?
- A. being given a jar of honey
- B. finding a trained volunteer to look after the hives
- C. seeing a picture of a bee
- D. moving the library

The Attic

The attic door had been painted shut for as long as Daniel could remember. His mother said there was nothing up there but dust and old suitcases. So when the decorators scraped away the paint on the first Saturday of the summer holidays, Daniel was the first one up the narrow stairs. The air was thick and warm and smelt of mothballs. Thin blades of light slid through gaps in the roof tiles and lay across the floorboards like fallen swords. In the far corner, beneath a sheet greyed with age, something waited. Daniel crossed the room slowly. Each board groaned beneath him as if complaining about being woken. He reached out, hesitated, then pulled the sheet away in one quick movement. It was a desk – small, battered, and covered in carvings. Initials. Dates. A crooked drawing of a sailing boat. And there, in the corner, carved more deeply than all the rest, were three letters he knew better than his own name: D.A.M. Daniel Adebayo Mensah. His grandfather. The grandfather who had died two years before Daniel was born, and whom his mother never spoke about. He ran his fingers over the letters. Downstairs, someone switched on a radio, and a burst of music floated up through the floor. Daniel did not move. For the first time, the silence in the attic did not feel empty. It felt like someone waiting to tell him a story.

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Question 8
Read "The Attic". What can we infer about Daniel's mother's feelings towards his grandfather?
- A. She never met him.
- B. She hid the desk because it was valuable.
- C. The subject is painful or difficult for her.
- D. She is excited to talk about him.

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Answer key: Making inferences

1. B. She looked down and became frightened.
2. C. It is raining outside.
3. A. She was close to crying.
4. A. She was quick and protective when it mattered.
5. D. triumphant and lightly humorous
6. C. It is especially impressive because octopuses learn without being taught.
7. B. finding a trained volunteer to look after the hives
8. C. The subject is painful or difficult for her.