Funny Inference Riddles Reading Worksheets for Inferencing Skills

Here's a unique and fun way for your students to strengthen their reading inference skills. With this collection of reading worksheets, they'll be reading funny riddles and then trying to figure out the answers by paying close attention to the exact wording of carefully designed hints. Inferencing may sound hard, but it's a natural and fun reading strategy when thinking about each word of a clue that will lead you to the riddle's answer.

Close reading and inferencing are important reading skills and these funny riddles worksheets are a great way to motivate students to develop their inference reading skills as they read and re-read the riddles and clues, trying to come up with the answers.

Once students "get" the joke, which may require a knowledge of homophones, homonyms, figures of speech or new vocabulary words, they'll be able to pose and explain the riddles to others, strengthening their oral presentation skills.

Each ready-to-print worksheet is followed by an answer key, so that students can self-check their work. The PDF file can also be emailed or assigned through Google Classroom.

In the classroom, hand out a riddle worksheet to pairs or small groups of students, and have them take turns reading a riddle and then reading the hints one by one until the answer is inferred, developing their collaborative discussion skills. For a whole class activity, hand out a new worksheet at the beginning of the week and hold a Riddles discussion and presentation session later. Encourage students to start and add to their own collections of riddles, including a set of hints for each riddle, and present the riddles at the session, exercising their speaking and recounting skills.

Inferencing is often introduced as a reading strategy in the 4th grade, and the riddles and jokes have been selected to be appropriate for grade 4, grade 5 and grade 6 classrooms.