Reading is a vital part of a classroom. 

It embeds skills that are used across the curriculum: vocabulary, emotional literacy and enjoyment, to name a few. 

Back in February 2018, I was racking my brains, trying to think of new ways to help my class understand making inferences.

Quick read: Languages: We can do better for our bilingual students

Quick listen: Learning through play: what are the benefits?

Want to know more? The truth about homework

We were using high-quality books in whole-class reading and most of the children really enjoyed books and book talk.

 But I still worried that they didn’t fully understand what inference was. 

Sure, with questions I could elicit information and answers from them by prompting what they needed to look for, but I wanted them to go beyond this and learn how to look for clues themselves. 

Boosting reading skills

And so, the Shoe Lesson was created. Each group of children had a pair of shoes in front of them and had decide to who might wear them. What could they tell me about the owner? 

By doing this, they were unconsciously making inferences about the object and had to articulate their views. It prompted heated discussion.

Next, they were given a picture of the person who wore the shoes. Here, we discussed the fact that so far they had made inferences about the person. What did they think now they saw who it was? Why?

Finally, they were given a piece of text and had to apply the same inference skills by using vocabulary and clues within the writing to dig deeper.

This was one of the most discussion-rich lessons I had ever taught: the children were keenly sharing ideas, debating and developing their group answers through persuasion. 

They understood that inference of text can mean something different to each person, but at its root there would be evidence for them to discover in order to form those opinions around.

This got me thinking: what other ways could I immerse the children in reading skills, without using any text? Here are some of my ideas: 

Where’s Wally

Print a picture from a Where’s Wally? book. Give the children three questions they need to answer using the “text” in front of them. Then, ask the children to develop their own three questions that others can answer.

This was something I thought was an original idea until, after the lesson, I discovered lots of people were already doing this - and for good reason.

Again, this lesson promotes lots of discussion, as well as utilising important skimming and scanning skills.

Puzzle Island

This activity is courtesy of my TA (thanks, Mr Kirby). The book contains a picture which has animals hidden in the artwork. There are pieces of text, written as a diary, opposite each page.

On the page opposite the image, blank out words from the text. Children need to read the text and find what the missing word might be using the related picture. 

This also helped us to work on vocabulary and applied knowledge, as we discovered lots of words that children didn’t know. Although this does include an element of text, the pictures enhance it greatly and could be used on their own.
 

Creating confidence

All of these activities not only encourage reading skills, but also promote confidence in reading.

By having no text, it allows the children to build their skills without words being a barrier: they can make inferences, answer questions, skim and scan without using a book. 

Therefore, when they do pick up a text, they can apply these skills with the belief they can do it.

Emily Weston is a Year 6 teacher at Tadpole Farm CE Primary Academy in Wiltshire