Your mind automatically inferences, deduces, concludes, reasons things all day. If there is light in the room it must be after 6:00am or if the sun is setting it must be around 8:00pm. At times during the day we may consciously focus on a situation to infer the meaning of the situation. We may wonder why a person was frowning or talking very loudly during our conversation. To do this, we usually review other interactions that we’ve had with this individual. We may review things that others have said about this individual. We may review the inference of other similar situations. Then we might begin to infer our present interaction with this individual. Merriam-Webster (2020) describes inference as “a conclusion or opinion that is formed because of known facts or evidence.” You are playing detective examining unseen and seen information, such as a picture or a group of words and analyzing your examination against your current stored information—what you already know to build a conclusion. You are “deep reading” the story looking between the lines or behind the scenes of the words or pictures or situation to form an inference. Many individuals learn how to infer naturally through their environment and will be able to infer or comprehend what the picture or words are trying to convey. Some students will need explicit, purposeful instruction to learn and practice the skill. Below are some examples of inferencing.
Example one, an individual should be able to infer the questions below about this poem by Valerie Danoff.
Jelly Bean
Jelly, jelly, jelly beans.
Belly, belly, belly beans.
Orange, white, black, green
Red, blue, yellow bean.
Many, many can be seen!
All the colors in between.
From one to many beans.
Guess how many jelly beans?
Based on your culture was this poem written by a female or male? How do you believe that the writer feels about jelly beans? How do you think that jelly beans are shaped? What color do you think a jelly bean is? What is a jelly bean? Is a jelly bean a type of food? Why is the poem asking me to guess how many jelly beans there are? Individuals who know what a jelly bean is would be able to answer these questions without much thought or examination of the poem. Those who do not know what a jelly belly is would have to examine the words of the poem to gather the information to infer the previous questions, such as:
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- look at the spelling of each word
- look at the meaning of each word
- analyze how the words are joined together to form the sentence
- look at the punctuation used
- look at word usage-repetition
- look at how the lines of the poem are related
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Example two, when you look at a picture your brain is examining the different parts of the picture and analyzing the information against your stored information to understand the meaning of the picture—not just the seen information, but the unseen information as well. When examining 
this “pumpkin” picture if you know that many people carve pumpkins at Halloween or if you knew the growing season for pumpkins, you could infer that this picture was taken in the fall. You could also infer that this picture was taken in field where the pumpkins and other crops might be grown. You might infer that pumpkins get their nutrients through their stem. You might infer that someone put them in groups by size. You might infer that this may be a place where you could buy pumpkins or that they were getting ready for market. And so on.
Example 3, when an individual is having an in-person or virtual (where you can see them) conversation, we are usually inferencing to comprehend the conversation. We are listening to their oral words-the tone, the inflections and using our personal knowledge of what is being said to understand the spoken words. We are also watching and examining (unconsciously) their body language-hands, arms, facial expressions and maybe even their clothing for possible clues that may help us to form a better understanding of their words.
Students should be purposely taught how to infer, deduce, conclude, or reason throughout their schooling, beginning in the preschool years. The complexity of the instruction should follow the achievement of the student. This skill can be taught within most subject matter. Most students enjoy being a detective to learn about a subject matter or to answer a burning question that they may have related to the subject matter.
