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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. Kim stepped up to the high board. Her knees shook as she looked down at the water. How does Kim feel? (angry / nervous / bored / sleepy) → nervousPrompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.
  2. 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.
  3. 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. / It is Omar's birthday. / Omar is ill. / It is a school day.) → It is Omar's birthday.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. 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? (impatient / relaxed / delighted / sleepy) → impatientPrompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.
  2. 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.

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.

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

Score/ 8

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 1

    Read "My Grandmother's Hands". What does the story about the slide show about Grandmother?

    • A. She did not like the baby.
    • B. She was frightened of slides.
    • C. She was always slow.
    • D. She was quick and protective when it mattered.

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.

  1. Question 2

    Read "The Kite Festival". Why did Amara's eyes sting?

    • A. She had paint in them.
    • B. She was close to crying.
    • C. The wind was full of dust.
    • D. The sun was too bright.

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 3

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

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

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 4

    Read "The Moon's Night Walk (a poem)". What is the mood of the poem?

    • A. gentle and peaceful
    • B. frightening
    • C. angry and noisy
    • D. sad and lonely

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.

  1. Question 5

    Read "The Climbing Wall". Why did Jaya's legs begin to tremble?

    • A. She was cold.
    • B. The rope broke.
    • C. She looked down and became frightened.
    • D. She was excited to reach the top.

  1. Question 6

    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?

    • A. Tariq did not do well.
    • B. Tariq got full marks.
    • C. Tariq's dad wrote the test.
    • D. The test was cancelled.

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.

  1. Question 7

    Read "The Long Wall". Why were watchtowers placed close together?

    • A. to save bricks
    • B. to make the wall look taller
    • C. so signals could be seen from one tower to the next
    • D. so soldiers could sleep in them

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.

  1. Question 8

    Read "The Attic". What can we infer about Daniel's mother's feelings towards his grandfather?

    • A. She is excited to talk about him.
    • B. She hid the desk because it was valuable.
    • C. She never met him.
    • D. The subject is painful or difficult for her.

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Answer key: Making inferences

  1. 1. D. She was quick and protective when it mattered.

  2. 2. B. She was close to crying.

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

  4. 4. A. gentle and peaceful

  5. 5. C. She looked down and became frightened.

  6. 6. A. Tariq did not do well.

  7. 7. C. so signals could be seen from one tower to the next

  8. 8. D. The subject is painful or difficult for her.