Predictions, Questions, & Inferences

Making predictions, asking questions, and making inferences while you read will help you understand and learn from what you’re reading.

boy wizard looking in crystal ball

Predictions are guesses about what will be or happen.

Before reading a text, LOOK at it. You can tell a lot from a passage's text features.

What type of text do you predict it will be? An informational article, a poem, a play, or a story?

What is the likely topic of the text? If it's an informational text, what will it be about? If it's a poem, what will be the subject?

While reading a text, you will confirm or correct your predictions. You can also make new predictions about what will come next in the passage, based on its text structure.

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three red question marks

When you ask questions, you are looking for answers.

Before reading, ask questions that will help you predict the type of text and topic.

While reading an informational text, ask questions like—

What is the main idea?

What details are most important?

How is the information organized?

While reading a story, poem, or play, ask questions like—

Who are the main characters?

What is the setting?

What sensory language does the author use?

After reading any text, you can still ask yourself questions like—

What did I learn from reading the passage?

How does what I learned matter to my own life?

What didn’t I understand? How can I make it clearer?

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child detective looking for clues

When you infer, you make a guess based on clues in a text.

Making Inferences gives you more information than is actually written down.

While reading stories and poems, look for clues about a character’s or speaker’s thoughts, feelings, personalities, and even past experiences. You may find clues in how characters behave, talk, or dress.

While reading informational articles, look for clues about how ideas are related to each other. Does one thing cause another? Is something a possible solution to a problem? Are two ideas or topics in a text similar, or different? You may find clues in the author's choice of words and text structure.

Besides clues in the text, you can also use your own experiences and outside knowledge to make inferences about what you are reading.

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REMEMBER: You understand what you read better when you are an active reader. Actively making predictions, asking questions, and making inferences as you read will help you understand and learn.

Predictions, Questions & Inferences - Combined

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