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8th grade · English Language Arts · Unit 7 of 14

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.

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) teks student expectation: 8.5(F); 8.6(D) · 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 Texas

In the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), this is unit 7 of 14 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: Texas Education Agency (TEA)

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

    Which sentence is an inference?

    • The raincoat is yellow.
    • Because Maya packed a raincoat, she must expect wet weather.
    • Maya packed a raincoat.
    • Maya packed her bag.

  2. Question 2

    What is the main idea of the passage?

    Why Bees Matter

    Bees spend their days moving from flower to flower, collecting nectar. As they travel, grains of pollen stick to their bodies and are carried to the next flower. This process, called pollination, allows many plants to make fruit and seeds.

    Without pollinators, farmers would grow far fewer apples, blueberries and almonds. That is why many communities plant wildflowers and avoid certain sprays that harm bees.

    • Wildflowers are bigger than apples.
    • Farmers do not need pollinators.
    • Bees pollinate plants, which helps food grow.
    • Bees make honey in the winter.

  3. Question 3

    After reading, you connect a story to something that happened to you. Which strategy is that?

    • making connections
    • proofreading
    • predicting
    • skimming

  4. Question 4

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

  5. Question 5

    What does the word pollination mean here?

    Why Bees Matter

    Bees spend their days moving from flower to flower, collecting nectar. As they travel, grains of pollen stick to their bodies and are carried to the next flower. This process, called pollination, allows many plants to make fruit and seeds.

    Without pollinators, farmers would grow far fewer apples, blueberries and almonds. That is why many communities plant wildflowers and avoid certain sprays that harm bees.

    • the carrying of pollen from flower to flower
    • the spraying of crops
    • the planting of wildflowers
    • the making of honey

  6. Question 6

    What is a local inference?

    • the title of the text
    • a conclusion about a specific word, phrase or sentence
    • a conclusion about the whole text
    • a summary of the whole chapter

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