Which of the following activities is most likely to help students improve their ability to make inferences while reading?

Having students predict what will happen next in the story is an effective way to enhance their ability to make inferences while reading. Predicting requires students to use clues from the text, combined with their background knowledge and experiences, to anticipate future events in the story. This process of making educated guesses fosters critical thinking and engages students in deeper comprehension.

When students make predictions, they must analyze the characters' motives, the setting, and the plot development, enabling them to draw connections that may not be explicitly stated in the text. This aligns closely with the skill of inference, as both involve reading between the lines and understanding implied meanings.

In contrast, while summarizing a text, reading aloud, or using a graphic organizer can enhance comprehension and recall, they do not specifically target the inferential skills that predictions do. Summarizing focuses on recalling main ideas, reading aloud promotes fluency and expression, and graphic organizers assist with visual mapping of information but do not directly invoke the inferential reasoning required for making predictions.