• She then inferred there must be people in the world who weren’t like her or people she knew—people who need to be told not to spit on the bus. • Again, she asked another question: “Who put that sign on the bus?” • Making yet another inference: If there are people who would spit on the floor of a city bus, a sign wouldn’t stop them. • This preschooler had synthesized so much information: If there’s a “No Spitting” sign, some people must be spitting on a bus. But a sign won’t work for those types of people, and a different solution to the problem is needed. In a few short moments, she made a number of inferences, questioned the text and its premises, evaluated it critically, synthesized it, and came to a conclusion. She fully comprehended ”no spitting,” in other words. She didn’t need strategy instruction, which has dominated comprehension instruction for nearly half a century. From working with and observing hundreds of children, we know they think strategically about a wide variety of things, all the time. So why do we still teach them, painstakingly, how to do that? This question will be explored more later.
Children are inferring all the time.
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KNOW BETTER, DO BETTER: COMPREHENSION
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