This study focuses on inferential comprehension instruction in the classroom. The overall aim is to study the way in which four teachers are designing their lessons to develop their students’ ability to make inferences in literary text in the Swedish subject. The main focus is to explore what teaching modules may look like to promote students’ ability to make inferences (e.g. text choice, group size and method) and how the teachers motivate their didactic work. The study is also focused on the opportunities and challenges associated with inferential comprehension instruction.

The methods used are qualitative studies using observations and interviews. The material consists of observation notes and interview recordings. The concept of inference and reading comprehension is consistent in the study and focuses on the importance of explicit instruction to improve the students’ inference comprehension. The models of inferential instruction are used to analyze the empirical material. The results show that teachers prefer to teach their students in groups of approximately 12 students, and they choose texts that are close to the students’ everyday life and in which a lot of inferences can be made. The majority of the teachers in the study demonstrate how they use the inference strategy by the method think aloud, to show their students examples of how to think and for them to use the strategy on their own eventually. All teachers remind the students of their own background knowledge, which is proven to increase the students’ ability to make inferences. This study shows that the possibilities with the teachers’ inference instruction lead to a deeper understanding among the students when reading. The challenges are lack of time when preparing, impatient students, and if the students do not activate the right background knowledge from the beginning, which will lead to misunderstandings while reading the text.