In the mid to upper elementary students will be required to notice tiny details in text and then use those details to make complex inferences about characters, or setting, or theme. These skills are hard and often students who fall behind in reading have issues with making inferences.
 
Over my time in working with students who struggle, I’ve realized that not only do they struggle with using those details to make the actual inference, but they struggle with simply noticing the details in text. One strategy that I’ve started using with students is to practice their “observation” skills first. What do you observe in the text? What do you notice?   And I begin this process by first taking the text away and observing a picture.
 
For example, take a look at this Norma Rockwell painting.
Using only your skill of observation make a mental list of everything you see.  ​

​Your list may start with things like:
girl
bench
door
two people in a separate room
​

Once you list the obvious drill down even further. Zoom in to specific areas of the painting and get specific.  For example if you zoomed in on the girl you might say:
 
hair
ribbon
socks
knees
black eye

 
 
But then we need to take it one step further. Let’s get descriptive about what we see in case we weren’t at first.
 
messy hair
untied ribbon
slouchy stretched out socks
bruised knees / bandaged knee
black eye
These are the details that will lead you to making inferences. (hair, ribbon, socks, and knees won’t allow you to make inferences that mean anything.)
 
 
Now that you’ve spent some time noticing. Tell me what do you think is going on in the picture?
This “thinking” part will be your inference.

​Think about the following questions:

1. What’s going on in the picture? (What makes you say that? What evidence in the text that you can observed made you say that?)
2. How is the little girl feeling? How do you know?
3. Why might she be feeling this?
4. What is the time period? How do you know?
5. Who do you think she got in a fight with?
6. Where is the other kid?
7. Who are the other two people?
8. If you had to give this painting a title, what would it be?

 
This process is helping in getting kids to notice and observe the details first and then use those details to make logical inferences.
 
Reading With Your Child
This same process can be used to get young kids to start thinking higher level.
For example, when reading a book to a young child pause on a page and ask some of the following questions:
 
*What’s happening in this picture? or Oh no! What happened?
*How does she feel? (If the child is able to correctly answer the question- follow it up with: You’re right. She’s sad. Look at her tears rolling down her face. Look at her lip puckering out.) Point out the “evidence” in the text to them. When they get older you will be able to ask them  How do you know?
*Why is she sad?
*Is it daytime or nighttime? How do you know? Yes it’s nighttime. Look at how dark it is. The moon is out. The moon comes out in the night time and the sun is out in the day time. 
*What’s going to happen next?
 
Simple questions like this can help young children develop vocabulary and higher level thinking skills.
 
Some great books for making inferences with young children are wordless/nearly wordless board books such as the David books and the Carl books. ​ However, any page of a book can work. 

By Mira Reisberg

Because Antoinette Portis is one of my favorite illustrators, I decided to do another review of one of her books, The Red Hat, which on the surface is a simple story by David Teague packed full of delightful adventures with Antoinette’s powerful  illustrations.

Here's a little about the story: Billy Hightower lives at the top of the tallest tower in the world, and he wants nothing more than to meet the girl in the red hat who lives at the top of the next tower over. The wind, unfortunately, has other ideas and thwarts Billy’s every attempt to communicate with the girl in the red hat—even blowing Billy and his homemade wind-surfing parachute off the tower!
 
Billy’s single-minded determination to meet the girl next door is totally  charming. David Teague’s to-the-point sentences reflect Billy’s focus to achieve his goal, even with the use of very little dialogue, and give Antoinette free reign with her active illustrations. Every page shows Billy at a  different angle, size, and perspective, doing a fantastic job of keeping the story moving and reader’s interested in Billy’s plight. The wind in this book is a character in its own right, ingenuously depicted as smooth, subtle light blue-green curling lines which are slightly raised off the page creating an additional interactive dimension to the story. Antoinette uses a limited palette of black, white, and blue, along with small splashes of red—Billy’s scarf, the girl’s hat, Billy’s dialogue against the wind, which make these elements really stand out.
 
Antoinette does a beautiful job bringing this story to life, expertly using point of view, a limited palette and multiple layers to delve deep into David Teague’s beautifully written, simple character-driven story or two kids in towers overcoming isolation to meet and connect.

I hope that you'll pick up and enjoy this lovely book.

Children are shaped to be the adult they become by the example they are given. So often we question how to be a better parent. How do we "teach" our children? But there is no one full proof lesson guaranteed to shape a child. Most of the teaching comes from what they see from the adults they look up to and are around daily. 

So today, I post these picture books about kindness not to "teach" our children anything. I post them to inspire the adults to take a step back and remember how powerful our words can be. 

Meet Brian, the invisible boy. Nobody ever seems to notice him or think to include him in their group, game, or birthday party . . . until, that is, a new kid comes to class.

When Justin, the new boy, arrives, Brian is the first to make him feel welcome. And when Brian and Justin team up to work on a class project together, Brian finds a way to shine.
​

It was the perfect summer. That is, until Jeremy Ross moved into the house down the street and became neighborhood enemy number one. Luckily Dad had a surefire way to get rid of enemies: Enemy Pie. But part of the secret recipe is spending an entire day playing with the enemy!In this funny yet endearing story, one little boy learns an effective recipes for turning your best enemy into your best friend. Accompanied by charming illustrations, Enemy Pie serves up a sweet lesson in the difficulties and ultimate rewards of making new friends.