Miles, a kindergarten English learner with autism spectrum disorder, struggles to understand the emotions of characters in stories during shared reading time. Which of the following is the most appropriate goal for the early interventionist to share with Miles' parents?

• A. Miles will learn how to summarize information from the text.
• B. Miles will learn how to make inferences about the text.
• C. Miles will learn how to generate and ask questions about the text.
• D. Miles will learn how to make predictions about the text.

Answer: (B)

Understanding how to infer emotions from characters in a story is essential for helping a child grasp social and emotional cues during reading. For Miles, focusing on inferring feelings from what the character looks like, says, does, and what’s happening in the scene gives him concrete, observable skills to connect text to emotions. This is especially helpful for an English learner and a child with autism spectrum disorder because it can be taught with visuals, simple labels, and repeated practice—things that provide clear, predictable supports. In practice, parents can support this at home by pausing during shared reading and asking Miles to consider how a character might feel, pointing to facial expressions or actions as clues, and encouraging him to name the emotion and explain why it fits. While other goals—like summarizing, generating questions, or predicting—are valuable for comprehension, they don’t target the specific ability to read and interpret characters’ emotions as directly as inferring emotions does.