This presentation will highlight the usefulness of students’ personal stories and experiences in developing inferencing as a reading skill, particularly when reading literature. To better understand inferencing, students can be asked to recall times in their own lives where they made assumptions based on observing details. When recalling these assumptions and their conclusions, an easy-to-understand parallel can be drawn with inferencing, or forming hypotheses based on details in a text. This is especially useful when reading literature, as a story’s plot and background is often suggested through details and is not explicitly declared. The presentation will give examples of connecting these “real-life” inferences to inferring personality traits of a novel's characters based on details about their actions, wardrobe, settings, etc. Attendees will come away with a fresh perspective on teaching inferencing as a reading skill and a greater appreciation for the use of personal experiences to inform reading skills.