Help......I can't find any short stories with a great inferring question

I teach Grade 4 and our school is focusing on inferring for the next 2 months. We all need to find a baseline story to use with one good inferring question to assess the children on. I have read TONS of short stories and can't find anything good. Any advice????? I can use pictures as part of my lessons afterwards, but for the baseline, I need a story.

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Permalink Reply by Katie Muhtaris on October 14, 2011 at 5:48am

I'm not sure I understand what you're looking for. Is this for a written response of some sort? I don't know that there's usually one big inference that a student makes from a story. Rather, inferring is something that children do as they read. Because part of inferring involves making predictions it's often necessary to track their inferential skills during the reading not just after. Can you use a graphic organizer of some sort for them to track their inferences and thinking during the reading process? You would probably get quite a bit more information about their understanding that way.

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Permalink Reply by Sherri Rayner on October 14, 2011 at 4:51pm

I get how to use infering as you read a text, but I have been looking for a good short story with one amazing inferencing question. Our school board has this as a focus and the whole school had to administer a reading test today to get a 'baseline' before teaching anything. We will spend the next 2 months focusing on explictly teaching how to infer while reading. I can find all kinds of ideas for 'lessons', but no real 'test type assessment' activities. I wrote my own letter and asked the children to infer who was writing the letter and who the letter was written to. I asked them to support their answer by proving it with information in the letter. Thanks for your ideas!

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Permalink Reply by Carol Sammon on October 14, 2011 at 11:15am

Have you considered Poetry? There are some great ones for 4th grade. Lots of inference material. Then you could select/prepare an inference question that suited all the teachers in the grade level. Some poetry books have the q's included within the book.

Lewis and Clark expeditions are two other stories that you could use. Both are suitable for inference assessment q's. Inference per chapter. Inference whole story. Maybe certain selected pages of the chapter, as in a fluency/comprehend read.