How to Boost Year 6 Inference Skills

Inference is the ability to read between the lines and extract deeper meaning beyond what is stated in a text. It is common for KS2 pupils to struggle with inference. This challenge often continues as they move up through the year groups. In their final year of primary school, many students routinely complete practice assessments using past SATs reading papers. Analysis of these often shows that year 6 inference skills still require significant attention.

SATs reading tests are intended to assess how well students understand what they read, including deeper levels of comprehension. The English National Curriculum states:

It is essential that, by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read fluently,
and with confidence, in any subject in their forthcoming secondary education.

Rightly or wrongly, their ability to do this is measured through end-of primary tests. The year 6 SATs reading assessment paper places considerable emphasis on checking a pupil's ability to answer inferential questions. In fact, around half of the questions on the 2025 year 6 SATs reading test were related to inference. If students haven’t developed the habit of thoughtfully engaging with texts, they’ll find it difficult to infer meaning. Given that so many test questions involve inference, those who lack these skills are unlikely to perform well.

So, how can year 6 inference skills be improved? Where should teachers begin? Here are some ideas.

Monitoring Fluency

A wealth of research highlights fluency as essential for comprehension. Students who lack confidence, pace, and expression often struggle to grasp what they are reading. Without a basic understanding of the text, it’s impossible for them to read between the lines and interpret deeper meanings.

If students can’t decode age-appropriate texts, the main focus should be on providing phonics intervention. In this instance, decoding skills need to take priority over teaching inference, though some comprehension work remains important. However, there are some year 6 pupils who read haltingly and without expression, despite being able to decode adequately. Targeted guidance can help many of these students improve.

Checking and aiming to improve fluency can be a very helpful step in a pupil's reading journey - and it is not too late to do this in year 6. For the reading SATs, year 6 students are expected to read at around 90 words per minute. However, fluency is not just about speed. Paying attention to punctuation and being expressive can help pupils understand the text more deeply.

Although time constraints can make this challenging, listening individually to pupils reading below the expected level allows you to offer tailored advice for boosting fluency.

Click the button below to access a modified version of Tim Rasinski's fluency rubric. This tool will help you pinpoint the crucial skills students need to develop to enhance their fluency, comprehension, and consequentially their inferential abilities.

Building the Foundations

Inference involves uncovering deeper meanings in a text by interpreting what is implied rather than stated. Pupils can't leap straight into inferring; first, they need a thorough grasp of what they have read. Building up key skills such as:

Monitoring: Do they actively check their understanding, notice mistakes while reading, and make corrections for clarity?
Summarising: Can they clearly articulate the main points of the passage?
Retrieving: Are they able to pick out important details from the text?
Visualising: Do they comprehend descriptive language that helps create mental images?

Teaching a variety of reading skills fosters overall understanding which in turn strengthens pupils' ability to infer meaning. In addition, as making inferences is also dependent on background knowledge, some aspects of developing the ability to make inferences occur outside the reading lesson. This extract from the DfE Reading Framework discusses the components which combine to enable pupils to confidently make inferences.

Since a reader draws on vocabulary knowledge, background knowledge and knowledge of language structures to construct a robust mental model, it does not make sense for pupils to practise making inferences discretely, as if it were a transferable skill. Teaching to develop pupils’ comprehension is better focused on:
• ensuring they can decode fluently
• developing their spoken language (including their vocabulary)
• deepening their knowledge through studying a knowledge-rich curriculum
• reading and discussing complex texts with them
• reading aloud to them
• encouraging them to read widely in their own time

Using a holistic approach is the most effective way of developing pupils’ inference skills. Although some schools narrow the curriculum before SATs in favour of test practice, this is not recommended. It can actually be detrimental. Inference ability is linked to broad background knowledge, which is best built through a wide curriculum and developing a range of reading skills.

Discussing Texts

Reading and discussing books as a class, especially complex ones, will build and strengthen year 6 inference skills. As stated in the DfE reading framework:

The national curriculum emphasises that comprehension develops through pupils’ experience of high-quality discussion with the teacher, as well as from reading and discussing a range of stories, poems and non-fiction...Pupils will become better at each of the assessed aspects of reading when they read, think deeply about, and respond to texts through discussion and in writing.

Here at Primary Texts we have created an engaging resource pack which will help pupils to develop their ability to infer. It is designed to enable pupils to develop their inference skills through discussion. It focuses on making inferences about characters and settings using a selection of high-quality engaging classic text extracts. Click the image below to find out more.

Engaging an entire class or select groups of students in thoughtful discussions about texts, followed by well-crafted activities, is an effective approach to strengthening their inference skills.

Wondering where to find high-quality reading texts for year 6? Not sure what to ask pupils in order to draw out their understanding? Familiar with doing planning for guided or whole-class reading, but like many teachers find it very time-consuming? You might be interested in some of the reading resources I have been involved in creating working with Badger Learning.

Badger Learning offer teacher notes for a wide variety of fiction books which include reading lessons which will help pupils to develop deeper understanding of the text. Lessons are focused around building a variety of reading skills including inference. Click the buttons below to explore the year 6 guided and whole-class reading selections.

Delve Deeper with Drama

The 2025 Curriculum Review places high priority on incorporating drama into lessons. Using drama can be a fantastic way of developing inference. Here are three commonly used drama activities that can help pupils to deepen their understanding of a text and think about characters and their motivations:

Hot-Seating: Choose one pupil to be the character from a book and ask the other pupils to think of questions to ask them. Encourage pupils to think of open questions. Teachers could provide question starters such as: Why did you...? Tell me more about...? Explain how you felt when...? The person who has been chosen to be a character should reply in role.
Freeze-frame: Choose a moment of high drama or conflict from a story. Have a brief discussion about what the character(s) might have been thinking at this point. Ask pupils to physically position themselves as though they are characters at this moment and a photo has been taken. Once they have created a 'freeze-frame', point to a pupil and ask them to speak their thoughts aloud in role as the character.
Conscience Alley: This drama technique is great way of exploring a character’s internal conflict at a point where they have a dilemma. Pupils form two lines to create an 'alley'. One pupil in role as the character walks down the middle as classmates voice different perspectives and advice, helping to examine motives and emotions. The video below demonstrates how to organise this activity. To simplify setup, it could be done in a school corridor. Alternatively, I have had the pupil-in-role stand at the front of the classroom whilst other pupils share their views. This avoids the fuss of moving furniture.

Practice Tests and Questions

Confident readers who can read fluently, are engaged with what they reading and have good understanding of the text are likely to have good inference skills. As mentioned above, practice, discussion, drama and a wider focus on developing reading skills comprehensively will help to build a pupil's ability to infer. However, even pupils who have good reading ability can be thrown by the unfamiliar format of the SATs test questions.

Test questions which focus on inference, especially those known as 3-markers are often set out in boxes. Sometimes pupils are provided with two or three lines. This is done to support pupils in organising their thoughts and demonstrating their knowledge quickly. Focus is placed on checking whether pupils can justify a statement or provide impressions or points with supporting pieces of evidence. Examples of these types of questions taken from the 2024 and 2025 reading tests are given below.

It is worth noting that strategies such as PEE (Point Evidence Explanation) or APE (Answer Prove Explain) are unlikely to help pupils answer 3-markers. These strategies are more suited to secondary than primary. They are quite advanced. In KS3 and 4, they are often used to help pupils create clear and focused arguments for essays and exams in English and other subjects. Primary pupils who have practised answering inference questions using these strategies typically find them difficult to grasp. If pupils have managed to hone these methods, they are often quite bewildered when they have to constrict their PEE / APE answers into boxes or the provided question format on the reading SATs test.

Primary Texts offers a collection of mini-tests which contain questions which aim to replicate the actual format of the year 6 reading SATs assessments and prepare pupils for the test. The short length of these tests mean they don't take too much time out of a busy curriculum. Answers are supplied to help teachers discuss the mini-tests and offer feedback.

In addition to our mini-tests, we also have an Inference and Impressions pack which provides teachers with the opportunity to help pupils specifically practise answering test style inference questions - including those 3-markers. We also offer a great-value year 6 revision bundle which combines three of our year 6 reading resources. Click the images below for more details.