Thursday, February 24, 2011

Inference Assessment

As I look ahead to working on inferring skills in the next two weeks, I want to find out more about what my students can do. Here is a simple inference assessment that gives me some useful information.

The inference in this assessment is a very simple kind of text-based inference. Students need to use information from one part of the text to answer a question at the end of the text. While it seems easy to adults, I'm always surprised at how students approach the task!

A question like this helps me to pinpoint which students are having trouble with putting aside their prior knowledge as they get new information, or see which students can make an inference but cannot find the specific details to support it. Each year, I've also found a few kids who do not know what a "hermit crab" is...this only highlights the importance of background knowledge for making inferences.

2 comments:

  1. I found this post today, but the document is no longer viewable. I am trying to figure out a way to assess my students' skills at making inferences. Is there any way I would be able to view this? Thanks!

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  2. Hi Heather! Send me an email at elkissn@yahoo.com and I'll send a few assessments your way. Thanks for writing!
    Emily

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