Inference from Expository Text: Middle School

Literacy · Grades 6–8 · 16 cards · about 15 min

Draw a supported conclusion from short informational passages with real numbers.

Between 2010 and 2020 the number of paper road maps sold in the U.S. fell by more than 80 percent. Over the same years, smartphone ownership rose from about 35 percent of adults to more than 85 percent. What does the passage suggest?
Say it out loud

What's in this activity

  • Between 2010 and 2020 the number of paper road maps sold in the U.S. fell by more than 80 percent. Over the same years, smartphone ownership rose from about 35 percent of adults to more than 85 percent. What does the passage suggest?
  • Paper maps got more expensive | People stopped traveling | Phone navigation largely replaced paper maps | Maps became less accurate
  • A school moved its start time from 7:25 to 8:40. Tardies dropped by a third, and the nurse saw fewer first-period headache complaints. What is the best conclusion?
  • The later start appears to have helped students | The nurse retired | Students stopped coming to school | Headaches are caused by homework
  • Most stores in the town now close by six. The mill that once ran three shifts shut down in 2016, and the population is down 22 percent since then. What is implied?
  • The town is growing | The stores are badly managed | The mill closing damaged the local economy | Everyone shops online now
  • Antarctic researchers rotate home every six months. Supply flights stop entirely for four months of the year, and the station keeps a full year of food on hand. Why does the station stockpile food?
  • Food is cheaper in bulk | Flights cannot reach the station for months at a time | Researchers eat more in cold weather | There is nowhere to cook
  • Sea turtles hatch at night and crawl toward the brightest horizon. On developed beaches, hatchlings are often found in parking lots. Why?
  • They are hunting for food | Artificial lights are brighter than the open ocean | They follow tire tracks | Parking lots hold heat
  • A city added a bike lane on Third Street. Average car trip times rose by about 90 seconds, while bike commuting on that street tripled. What does the data suggest about the tradeoff?
  • The bike lane failed | Nobody drives on Third Street anymore | Drivers lost a little time and many more people biked | The lane made car traffic faster
  • Archaeologists found fish bones and stone net weights at a 3,000-year-old site 60 miles inland. What is the most reasonable inference?
  • The site used to be underwater | The people there traded for or traveled to get fish | Fish once lived on land | The dating must be wrong
  • A company announced all employees must return to the office five days a week. The next quarter, applications for its open roles fell by half. What is implied?
  • The company stopped hiring | Applications are always seasonal | The roles were eliminated | Remote flexibility mattered to applicants

About this activity

Sixteen items asking for a supported conclusion from short informational passages: paper road map sales fell by more than eighty per cent between 2010 and 2020 while smartphone ownership rose sharply — what does the passage suggest; a school moved its start time later, tardies dropped by a third and the nurse saw fewer first-period complaints — what is the best conclusion. The correct answers are all hedged, which is the point.

How to use it in a session

Insist on the evidence for each choice. Phone navigation largely replaced paper maps is supported; people stopped travelling is not, and asking which sentence rules it out is the reasoning being built. The school start time item is a good one to dwell on, because the correct answer says appears to have helped rather than caused — that hedge is what separates a supported conclusion from an overstatement.

What to listen for

Watch for students choosing the strongest-sounding option. Middle schoolers reliably prefer a confident answer to a hedged one, and the hedged one is usually correct in this kind of item. Notice whether they can point at the sentence that supports their choice — an inference without a source in the text is a guess that happened to land.

Carrying it home

Any article with numbers works. Asking what the numbers actually show, against what the student assumed they showed, is a short conversation with real transfer to testing.

Questions

What grades is this for?
Sixth through eighth, using informational passages rather than narrative ones.
Is it free?
Yes, all sixteen items play with no account.
Why are the correct answers so cautious?
Because that is what the evidence supports, and because assessments are written the same way. A student who learns to prefer the hedged option when the evidence is limited will get more of these right.