Making Inferences In Writing

Learning about inference is a great time to teach “show not tell” for writing.  A teacher can create a inference challenge.  She can give each table a different emotion and have the students write about the things the a character might be doing to portray that emotion without using the actual word. This would mean they would have to use their background knowledge or schema of the emotion they were given, and provide clues for their reader to make the appropriate assumptions. 

Challenge your students to uses this same concept in their writing.  Maybe a student would like to show in their story that they are scared.  Students will need to give their readers enough clues about being scared, without using the actual word scared, in order get their point across.  Look for examples of this in books with pictures, and without.