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8th grade · English Language Arts · Unit 7 of 12

Reading Detective

Predict, infer and summarize

What your child practices

Making and checking predictions, choosing a strategy when reading gets tricky, drawing local and global inferences from clues, and summarizing the main ideas of complex texts.

Alabama Course of Study content standard: 8.2 · inferring and summarizing

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Predict, then check your prediction as you read.
  2. An inference uses clues plus what you know. A local inference is about one detail; a global one is about the whole text, like its message.
  3. Summarize the main ideas in your own words. Use connections to understand.

Example: You stop and say, “The author is trying to teach us about honesty.” What are you making? This is about the message of the whole story. An inference about the whole text is global. Answer: a global inference

Reading Detective in Alabama

In the Alabama Course of Study, this is unit 7 of 12 in 8th grade English Language Arts, after Forms, Patterns & Visuals and before Digital Citizens.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE)

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    What mood does the passage create?

    The Hike

    The sky had turned gray by noon, and the wind was picking up. Tomás checked his phone: no signal. Mia pulled out the trail map and frowned.

    “We still have two hours to the summit,” she said. Far off, something rumbled.

    • tense
    • sleepy
    • silly
    • cheerful

  2. Question 2

    What is a global inference?

    • a conclusion about the text as a whole, such as the theme or the author's purpose
    • a guess about one word
    • a spelling rule
    • a fact stated in the text

  3. Question 3

    What is the best prediction about what happens next?

    The Night Market

    Stalls glowed under strings of lanterns, and the air smelled of grilled corn and sweet dough. Ana held her brother's hand tightly as the crowd pushed past.

    “Stay close,” she said. A moment later, the lights flickered, and the music stopped.

    • The lights go out or something unexpected happens, and Ana must keep her brother close.
    • The market becomes a library.
    • Ana leaves the market for the day.
    • Ana forgets about her brother.

  4. Question 4

    Which detail best supports your prediction?

    The Hike

    The sky had turned gray by noon, and the wind was picking up. Tomás checked his phone: no signal. Mia pulled out the trail map and frowned.

    “We still have two hours to the summit,” she said. Far off, something rumbled.

    • Tomás checked his phone.
    • Mia pulled out the map.
    • The sky had turned gray and the wind was picking up.
    • They have a trail map.

  5. Question 5

    What is the best prediction about what happens next?

    The Hike

    The sky had turned gray by noon, and the wind was picking up. Tomás checked his phone: no signal. Mia pulled out the trail map and frowned.

    “We still have two hours to the summit,” she said. Far off, something rumbled.

    • The hikers will reach the summit before noon.
    • The hikers will find a signal and cancel the hike.
    • The wind will stop and the sky will clear.
    • The weather will get worse and the hikers will have to decide whether to turn back.

  6. Question 6

    You reach a word you do not know in a science article. Which strategy should you try first?

    • skip the whole article
    • guess any meaning
    • reread the sentence for context clues, then check the glossary
    • stop reading

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