5th Grade · Reading · RL.5.1
Making Inferences Lesson Plan for 5th Grade
A ready-to-teach making inferences lesson for 5th Grade, built around inferring characters' motives and feelings, the setting and events the story does not tell, and supporting each inference with a quote. Print the plan, print the practice pages, and you are set.
Approximately 47 minutes
Learning objective
- Infer motives, feelings and hidden events from story clues
- Infer the setting from details about time and place
- Back up each inference with a quote from the story
Materials
- What can you infer? (making inferences)
- What can you infer? Set 2 (making inferences)
- Write an inference (making inferences)
- Write an inference, set 2 (making inferences)
- It says, I know, and so (making inferences)
- It says, I know, and so, set 2 (making inferences)
- Pencils, and whiteboard space for the modeled examples
Lesson steps
1. Build the background (5 min)
Connect making inferences to a book the class already finished. Prior knowledge is doing most of the work in comprehension, so spend the time here.
2. Read aloud and think aloud (I do) (10 min)
Read a short passage aloud and stop twice to narrate your own thinking about making inferences. Students are learning the move, not the answer.
3. Guided practice (we do) (12 min)
Read a second passage together. This time students find the evidence and you record it. Push every answer back to the text with "what words told you that?"
4. Independent practice (you do) (15 min)
Hand out "What can you infer? (making inferences)". Students read and answer on their own. Circulate and ask individuals to point to the line in the text that supports their answer.
5. Share and close (5 min)
Two or three students share an answer and the evidence behind it. Restate making inferences one final time in the students' own words, not yours.
Check for understanding
Ask each student to point to the evidence in the text for one of their answers. A student who has the right answer but cannot find the line has not yet learned making inferences.
Differentiation
Extra support. Students who stall: pull them into a small group and rebuild making inferences with concrete materials or a simpler text before asking for the written work again. Do not send the page home as homework, it will just rehearse the misunderstanding.
Extension. Students who finish early: ask them to write their own making inferences problem for a partner to solve, then check the partner's work. Creating a problem is harder than solving one and it surfaces whether they really understand making inferences.
Skills covered in this lesson
Making inferences
