Teaching Inference

Teaching Inference - "Thinking and reasoning processes—such as problem solving, decision making, and the like—have been identified as legitimate and even necessary 21st century skills. Although they are not new skills, what is new in the last 20 years is that we've become aware that some cognitive processes are foundational to higher-order thinking. Inference is one of those foundational processes. To begin, it's useful to make students aware of the fact that they generate inferences all the time. Teachers can foster this awareness in a variety of ways. For example, if elementary students are reading a story about two children walking alone through the forest, the teacher might ask them to predict what will happen next. One student might report: 'something bad is probably going to happen.'"