September 26 and September 29, 2025 Skills

Hi, everyone!
Yesterday we did some impressive work on forming paraphrases and making inferences. They are important literary terms that help us understand the observations we make in our lives and how we often add meaning to them. We also use these tools every time we read a book or watch a movie and make sense of what is happening! We will do some further practice today (and all year long, actually!) to strengthen our knowledge of the paraphrase and inference.

Part One
Paraphrase and Inference
Directions: Decide if each sentence sounds like a paraphrase or an inference based on how it is presented. We are taking these sentences out of context, which makes this assignment all the more difficult! But I have faith in you!!

1. The jazz club held one hundred customers on Thursday evening. 
Paraphrase     Inference
2. The jazz club held one hundred customers who seemed excited to be hearing their favorite band.
Paraphrase     Inference
3. He is certainly the nicest person you will ever meet.
Paraphrase     Inference
4. She works hard at everything she does, and I think she can achieve just about anything!
Paraphrase     Inference
5. Steva worked as a Special Education teacher for twenty-five years.
Paraphrase     Inference
6. Christopher bought a new car on Thursday.
Paraphrase     Inference
7. Christopher seemed very happy with his new purchase.
Paraphrase     Inference
8. The RW3 Classes are filled with hardworking, dedicated individuals who are easily motivated to learn!
Paraphrase     Inference
9. I think the teacher enjoys working with her classes and hopes they will succeed.
Paraphrase     Inference
10. Today is going to be the best day of the week!
Paraphrase     Inference
11. It rained all day on Thursday.
Paraphrase     Inference
12. On Fridays, traffic is better for the morning commute because many people must work at home that day.
Paraphrase     Inference
13. Pam's class will join us for an activity this morning.
Paraphrase     Inference
14. The family was going on a vacation to Hawaii.
Paraphrase     Inference
15. Hawaii is one of the most beautiful places in the country.
Paraphrase     Inference
16. Don't forget to put a stamp on that envelope before you mail it.
Paraphrase     Inference
17. The coffee tasted great, and I thought it must be Colombian because of the rich taste.
Paraphrase     Inference
18. There were no tables available in the restaurant, so we had to wait in the lobby.
Paraphrase     Inference
19. This is the nineteenth sentence in this activity.
Paraphrase     Inference
20. The students understand paraphrase and Inference much better now.
Paraphrase     Inference

Situation: Todd is the manager of a grocery store, and he deals with pleasant customers as well as angry ones. One day, a customer named Jani said, "This is the third time this week that you are out of the bread I need. If you don't order more next week, I'll be shopping somewhere else!"

1. How would you paraphrase this?

2. What inferences would you make?

Note: When we make inferences, we often use our five senses to decide what is happening.
When we form a paraphrase, we simply repeat the same idea using different words but without adding our OWN meaning to it.

Part Two
Writing
Directions: Continue the story from the sentences that appear below.

     It was an especially dreary night, with thunder and lightning punctuating the silence in Tim's living room. He had been waiting patiently for his cousins to show up, but after almost two hours, he began to wonder where they could possibly be.