“While foundational decoding skills such as phonological awareness and fluency are essential,” says Jen O’Sullivan (Marino Institute of Education, Ireland) in The Reading Teacher, “reading comprehension depends equally on children’s ability to construct meaning beyond the words on the page… Skilled reading is not simply a matter of recognizing words on the page; it requires the ability to understand, interpret, and engage with meaning… One key component of this meaning-making process lies in the ability to make inferences.”
What does that involve? Making inferences is the ability to combine textual information with background knowledge, says O’Sullivan, allowing the reader to go beyond what’s explicitly stated and draw conclusions, make predictions, and understand implications. “This cognitive process is crucial to reading comprehension,” she says, “and requires children to integrate what they read with what they already know and, just as importantly, to pay close attention to clues within the text itself.”
Inferencing is a process rather than a single skill, and is not something that can be taught in a lesson and checked off. It needs to be taught over time, starting with non-reading activities like:
- A “mystery bag” with students guessing the occupation of someone with a lunchbox, crayon, and library card (a student) or an adult with a stethoscope, notebook, and ID badge (a doctor);
- Looking at the Norman Rockwell painting Going and Coming and answering questions about what’s going on, where people are going, and the time of year;
- Using wordless picture books like The Snowman (Raymond Briggs) and Journey (Aaron Becker) to answer questions about why a character did something and how they are feeling;
- Using oral language games and role play like “What’s my emotion?” and using puppets to act out everyday situations and pose questions about what might happen next.
All this culminates with reading aloud from high-quality texts with emotional depth and implied meaning and using the BUILD framework to help children connect the content to what they know, laying the foundation for skilled comprehension:
- Build background knowledge. Introduce content-rich topics across the curriculum, exposing children to a variety of concepts, experiences, and worldviews.
- Unpack vocabulary and context. Identify and pre-teach essential words and concepts.
- Infer meaning through modeling. Pause to ask questions like What do you think is happening here? and Why might the character be acting this way?
- Link texts to real-life experiences. Connect stories to familiar routines, emotions, or experiences children have had.
- Deepen understanding through extension activities. Reinforce inferencing skills through discussion, writing, and creative projects.
How can inferencing skills be assessed? The best way, says O’Sullivan, is through formative observations as children talk, play, and share reading, watching to see if they are:
- Using background knowledge to fill in information that’s not directly stated;
- Identifying clues in visual or written texts that support an idea;
- Linking their insights or responses to those clues from the reading;
- Connecting story events to their own experiences or to world knowledge;
- Inferring a character’s feelings, motives, or intentions from actions, words, or illustrations.
“When we nurture both word recognition and language comprehension from the earliest years,” O’Sullivan concludes, “we give children more than the ability to read words on a page. We open the door to understanding, curiosity, and lifelong enjoyment of reading.”
“From Decoding to Understanding: Building Background Knowledge and Inferencing Skills in Early Readers” by Jen O’Sullivan in The Reading Teacher, January/February 2026 (Vol 79, #4, pp. 1-21); O’Sullivan can be reached at jennifer.osullivan@mie.ie.
Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1118 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.
