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Hi there! I am Studyfin, your ELA tutor. Today, we are going to learn a super cool reading skill called making inferences!
An inference is a smart guess you make when you read. Authors do not always tell you everything directly. Instead, they leave clues for you to find.
To make an inference, you combine two things: clues from the text and things you already know from real life. Think of yourself as a reading detective!
We must always find text evidence to back up our guesses. If you cannot point to clues in the story, your inference might just be a wild guess instead of a smart one.
Read this short passage: 'Maya put on her heavy yellow raincoat and grabbed her umbrella from the closet. She looked out the window and sighed.' What can you infer about the weather, and how do you know?
- Identify the question: We need to figure out what the weather is like using clues.
- Find the clues in the text: Maya grabs a 'heavy yellow raincoat' and an 'umbrella'.
- Connect to your schema: In real life, people only wear raincoats and carry umbrellas when it is raining or about to rain.
- Combine the clues and schema: Raincoat + Umbrella + Real-life knowledge = It is raining outside.
- Make your final inference: The weather is rainy. The text evidence of the raincoat and umbrella supports this.