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English lesson plan · 5th grade (Year 6 in England) · 60 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 · 6 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.
  1. Ben left his sandwich on the picnic blanket. A seagull circled overhead. What will probably happen next? (It will start to snow. / Ben will plant a tree. / The sandwich will fly away by itself. / The seagull will grab the sandwich.) → The seagull will grab the sandwich.Prompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.
  2. Kim stepped up to the high board. Her knees shook as she looked down at the water. How does Kim feel? (sleepy / nervous / bored / angry) → nervousPrompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.
  3. 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 get colder. / It will freeze. / It will melt. / It will grow.) → It will melt.Prompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.

Hook · 6 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 · 12 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 · 12 min

  • Do these together. Students try each step on whiteboards before you reveal it.
  • Use the hints as prompts rather than giving the answer.
  1. Bea's eyes lit up when she unwrapped the paints. She had been asking for them since the summer. What can you infer? (Bea is pleased with her present. / Bea dislikes painting. / Bea is disappointed. / Bea bought the paints herself.) → Bea is pleased with her present.Prompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.
  2. 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? (relaxed / sleepy / delighted / impatient) → impatientPrompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.

You do: independent practice · 17 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 · 7 min

  • Two questions on their own. Sort answers into got it / nearly / not yet to plan the next lesson.
  1. The house was silent. Dust covered the furniture, and cobwebs hung from every corner. What can you infer about the house? (A party is happening. / Nobody has lived there for a long time. / It is brand new. / It was cleaned this morning.) → 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

eurekami

Making inferences

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The Moon's Night Walk (a poem)

The moon puts on her silver coat and tiptoes up the sky. She hums a tune to sleepy owls and winks at clouds nearby. She paints the rooftops pearly white, she lights the cat's way home, she peeps into the children's rooms to check they're not alone. She counts the stars like sleeping sheep, she sings the sea to rest, she hangs a lantern on the hill for travellers in the west. And when the sun yawns in the east and stretches out his rays, the moon slips off her silver coat and hides away for days. But look up on a quiet night when all the town's asleep: she's tiptoeing across the sky with promises to keep.

  1. Question 1

    Read "The Moon's Night Walk (a poem)". What is happening in the fourth verse?

    • A. Morning is coming and the moon is disappearing.
    • B. A storm is starting.
    • C. The children are waking the moon.
    • D. The moon is getting brighter.

A Day at the Fire Station

Firefighters do much more than put out fires. At Station 9, the day begins at eight o'clock sharp with a check of every piece of equipment. The crew test the hoses, check the air tanks and make sure the ladders slide smoothly. "If something is broken, we need to know now, not when there's an emergency," says Captain Rivera. After the checks, the firefighters exercise for an hour. Their job is very physical. They must carry heavy hoses, climb ladders in thick protective suits and sometimes carry people to safety. In the afternoon, the crew often visit schools to teach children about fire safety. They show how to check smoke alarms and explain why you should never hide during a fire. "Get out, stay out, and call for help," Captain Rivera tells every class. When the alarm rings, everything changes. The crew pull on their gear, jump into the fire engine and are on their way in less than a minute. Calls might be for a house fire, a car accident or even a cat stuck up a tree. Whatever the emergency, the firefighters of Station 9 are ready.

  1. Question 2

    Read "A Day at the Fire Station". Why do the firefighters need to exercise?

    • A. It is the rule at every job.
    • B. Their job needs strength and fitness.
    • C. They are training for a race.
    • D. They have nothing else to do.

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.

  1. Question 3

    Read "The Vault at the Top of the World". Why does the writer compare the vault to a fire extinguisher?

    • A. Both are red and heavy.
    • B. Both are kept ready for an emergency, and we hope not to need them often.
    • C. Both are found in schools.
    • D. Both are used every day.

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.

  1. Question 4

    Read "The Clever Octopus". What does the final paragraph suggest about octopus intelligence?

    • A. Octopuses are not really intelligent.
    • B. It is especially impressive because octopuses learn without being taught.
    • C. Octopuses learn everything from their parents.
    • D. Octopuses live longer than most animals.

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.

  1. Question 5

    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 did not like the baby.
    • C. She was always slow.
    • D. She was frightened of slides.

The Margin

Zainab had read the library book three times before she noticed the handwriting. It was in the margin of page 112, so faint she had taken it for a smudge. In tiny, slanted letters, someone had written: "Don't trust the narrator." Underneath, in different ink and a rounder hand, someone else had replied: "Why not?" And beneath that, in the first writer's slant: "Read chapter 9 again." She read chapter 9 again. Then she read it a fourth time, and a fifth, and on the sixth she saw it – a single sentence where the narrator claimed to have been at home when, three chapters earlier, he had described himself on a train. A lie, hidden in plain sight. The whole story tilted, like a picture knocked crooked on a wall. Zainab sat back. She checked the date stamps on the card inside the front cover. The book had been borrowed forty-seven times since 1994. Somewhere among those forty-seven readers were two people who had held a conversation across years without ever meeting. She found a pencil. For a long time she hesitated over the page, feeling as if she were about to speak in a room full of strangers. Then, carefully, beneath the other two, she wrote: "Found it. Thank you." When she returned the book, the librarian frowned at the pencil marks. Zainab apologised. But as she walked home, she wondered who would be next to find them.

  1. Question 6

    Read "The Margin". What did Zainab discover in chapter 9?

    • A. The name of the first writer.
    • B. A missing page.
    • C. The narrator had told a lie that contradicted an earlier chapter.
    • D. Another note in the margin.

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!

  1. Question 7

    Read "How to Build a Junk Robot". Why should you ask an adult to help with Step 1?

    • A. Adults choose the robot's name.
    • B. Adults are better at gluing.
    • C. The box is too heavy.
    • D. Cutting with scissors can be tricky or unsafe.

Should Primary Schools Ban Homework?

Every evening, in homes across the country, the same battle takes place: tired children, frustrated parents and a worksheet that nobody wants to finish. It is time for primary schools to ban homework. The most important reason is that, for young children, the evidence for homework is weak. Several large reviews of research have found that homework has little measurable effect on the test results of pupils under eleven. Older students may benefit, but for younger children, the hours spent on worksheets do not seem to pay off. Second, children need time to play, rest and be with their families. Play is not a waste of time; it builds creativity, problem-solving and friendships. A child who has spent six hours concentrating at school deserves an evening to explore, read for pleasure or simply be bored – which is when imagination often kicks in. Some people argue that homework teaches responsibility. This is a fair point. However, children can learn responsibility in many other ways: feeding a pet, helping to cook dinner or practising an instrument they have chosen themselves. Finally, homework can be unfair. Some children have parents who can help them every night and a quiet desk to work at. Others share a small space with siblings or have parents who work late. Homework can widen the gap between these children instead of closing it. Schools should replace homework with something simple: read every day, for fun. That is one habit worth taking home.

  1. Question 8

    Read "Should Primary Schools Ban Homework?". What is the writer's tone?

    • A. confident and reasonable
    • B. humorous and silly
    • C. angry and insulting
    • D. uncertain and confused

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Answer key: Making inferences

  1. 1. A. Morning is coming and the moon is disappearing.

  2. 2. B. Their job needs strength and fitness.

  3. 3. B. Both are kept ready for an emergency, and we hope not to need them often.

  4. 4. B. It is especially impressive because octopuses learn without being taught.

  5. 5. A. She was quick and protective when it mattered.

  6. 6. C. The narrator had told a lie that contradicted an earlier chapter.

  7. 7. D. Cutting with scissors can be tricky or unsafe.

  8. 8. A. confident and reasonable