How Can I Help My Child With Inferencing and Reading Comprehension?
Reading comprehension is about much more than simply reading the words on a page. To understand a story or passage, children need to use language, background knowledge, reasoning, and higher-level thinking skills to make meaning from what they read.
One important reading comprehension skill is inferencing. Making an inference means using clues from the text along with what we already know to understand information that the author does not state directly. For example, if a story says that a child grabbed an umbrella and put on a raincoat before leaving the house, a child might infer that it is raining—even though the story never directly says, “It is raining.”
Inferencing helps children understand characters, events, emotions, and the overall meaning of a story. Children who have difficulty with language comprehension may also find it challenging to make inferences, understand implied information, or answer “why” and “how” questions about what they have read.
Fortunately, there are several ways parents can support reading comprehension and inferencing skills at home.
1. Look for Clues in the Text
Encourage your child to pay attention to important details and clues in the story.
You can ask:
“What clues did the author give us?”
“What did you notice in the story?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Can you find something in the story that supports your answer?”
If your child is unsure about something, encourage them to go back and reread the surrounding sentences or paragraphs. Rereading can help children find information they may have missed the first time and use the available clues to understand the text more accurately.
2. Connect the Story to What Your Child Already Knows
Children use their background knowledge to understand and interpret what they read. Help your child make connections between the story and their own experiences or knowledge.
For example, if a character is nervous about starting a new school, you might ask:
“Have you ever felt nervous about going somewhere new? How did you feel?”
You can then discuss how that experience might help them understand the character's feelings.
It is also helpful to talk about whether a connection is actually relevant to the story. Children can learn that not every piece of background knowledge is useful for understanding what they are reading.
3. Think About Characters' Feelings, Thoughts, and Intentions
Inferencing is especially important when children are trying to understand characters' emotions, motivations, and intentions.
While reading, ask questions such as:
“How do you think the character is feeling?”
“Why do you think they did that?”
“What makes you think the character feels that way?”
“What do you think the character might do next?”
“Why did the character say that?”
Encourage your child to support their answers with evidence from the story. Rather than simply asking for an answer, ask them to explain how they know.
This helps children move beyond recalling information that is explicitly stated and begin thinking about information that the author expects the reader to figure out.
4. Put the Clues Together
Once your child has identified clues and connected them with their background knowledge, encourage them to put everything together to make an inference.
A simple strategy is:
Text clues + What I already know = My inference
For example:
Text clue: Sarah looked outside, grabbed her umbrella, and put on her boots.
What I know: People often use umbrellas and boots when it is raining.
My inference: It is probably raining outside.
You can use this strategy with stories, books, conversations, and everyday situations. Over time, children can become more comfortable explaining how they arrived at an answer rather than simply providing the answer itself.
5. Talk About the Story After Reading
Reading comprehension activities do not have to stop when the story ends. Talking about a book after reading can provide additional opportunities to practice comprehension and inferencing.
Ask your child to:
Retell the story in their own words.
Identify the beginning, middle, and end.
Recall important details.
Describe the characters.
Explain the main problem and how it was solved.
Explain why characters behaved in certain ways.
Predict what might happen next.
Share what they think the author was trying to communicate.
You can also encourage your child to add more detail to their answers. For example, instead of stopping after your child says, “The boy was sad,” ask, “What happened that made him sad?” or “What clues tell you that he was sad?”
These conversations can provide valuable opportunities to strengthen language comprehension, narrative skills, and inferential thinking.
How Can a Speech-Language Pathologist Help With Reading Comprehension?
Reading comprehension is closely connected to oral language skills. Children may have difficulty understanding stories because they are struggling with vocabulary, sentence comprehension, answering questions, retelling stories, understanding characters' perspectives, or making inferences.
A Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) can assess your child's communication and language skills and determine which areas may be affecting their ability to understand and discuss what they read.
Speech-language therapy may target skills such as:
Vocabulary and word knowledge
Following and understanding complex sentences
Answering comprehension questions
Making inferences
Understanding implied information
Identifying main ideas and important details
Story retelling and narrative skills
Understanding characters' perspectives
Predicting and explaining
Verbal reasoning and problem-solving
If your child is having difficulty understanding what they read, providing support early can help them develop the language and comprehension skills they need to become more confident readers.
Speech Therapy for Reading Comprehension in Vaughan
At Kurliand Speech Clinic, we provide speech and language services for children and families in Vaughan, Ontario, including Vaughan, Woodbridge, Maple, and surrounding communities. Our Speech-Language Pathologists can assess your child's communication and language skills and provide individualized support based on their needs.
If you have concerns about your child's reading comprehension, inferencing, language development, or communication skills, a speech and language assessment can help identify areas of difficulty and determine whether speech-language therapy may be beneficial.
References
Barth, A. E., Ankrum, E. R., & Newman Thomas, C. (2024). Inference instruction for students
with reading disabilities. Rural Special Education Quarterly, 43(4), 225–234.
Barth, A. E., & Elleman, A. (2017). Evaluating the impact of a multistrategy inference
intervention for middle-grade struggling readers. Language, Speech, and Hearing
Services in Schools, 48(1), 31–41. https://doi.org/10.1044/2016_LSHSS-16-0041
Dicataldo, R., Rowe, M. L., & Roch, M. (2022). “Let’s read together”: A parent-focused
intervention on dialogic book reading to improve early language and literacy skills in
preschool children. Children, 9(8), 1149. https://doi.org/10.3390/children9081149
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