If you need a good place to start with analysis then making inferences is the perfect solution for you. As we embark on our first unit of study and tackle writing our first literary analysis essay, my students always struggle with how to elevate their writing from summary to analysis. In order to help them understand this concept, we start at the very beginning with making inferences and drawing conclusions.

In order to engage my students in this process, we watch an open-ended, no clear answer music video by Ella Henderson and analyze what we see and don’t see. Ella Henderson’s “Ghost” music video tells the story of three people: a young girl, a young man, and an older man. The premise of the story is that the girl is murdered/drowned (unclear) and the older man is to have done it. However, the young man is the one running from the police in the video. The entire time, it is unclear how the old man relates to the young man.

By starting at this basic level of making inferences about this video, the students gain an understanding and confidence that they can accomplish a literary analysis essay.

Making Inferences Lesson

Here is my lesson on Making Inferences

1. My students first receive a copy of Ella Henderson’s “Ghost” Lyrics. Click HERE for the lyrics to this song.
2. I tell my students to watch the music video the first time and just pay attention to the story line and what they believe is happening in this music video.

Note: As a heads up to you, I always warn my students that there will be an older gentleman with his shirt off for part of the video and Ella Henderson has a Deep V dress on at the end of the video (but who doesn’t walk down the street with a bright red dress and police cars following you in the background). You may want to preview the video before showing the class. My students are in 10th grade and they can handle these two moments of the video just fine.

3. After the first viewing, students will already start sharing their theories but refrain from giving them any clues or opinions. Students are now given a set of questions to answer as they view the video again. Some questions are factual and some questions are inferential.

Here are the questions I ask:

• From whom is the young guy running away? 
• What is he wearing? 
• What is the old man looking at in the hotel mirror? 
• What happens to the young woman? Who does it? 
• What happens at the very end of the music video? 
• Who is singing the song? The young man, the old man, or the young woman? 
• Why is the title of the song “Ghost”?

4. After the second viewing, I go through these questions with the students. Questions #1-#5 are all factual questions and I start with them. After these questions, I stop the class to share that each of these questions is factual and has one right answer

5. For the last two questions, I ask students to share their thoughts on the situation, the back story, and who is singing the song. I require them to give evidence from the video when they are sharing with the class.

6. After every theory has been shared, agreed upon, and debated, I share that Ella Henderson purposely did not share how the story should be… which drives my students crazy! They want one right answer which is a great lead in to sharing with them that what they just did was make inferences. I then share that stating their opinion and supporting it with evidence is all literary analysis is, and that if they can do it with a music video, they can do it with an essay.

Making inferences is first step I take towards helping my students to better understand literary analysis and help them to gain confidence in their writing.