Children can learn to make inferences from movies and television, just as they learn to do in their reading. Facial expressions, physical gestures and body language all can help children learn how to intuit meaning that is not directly stated. Have children watch a clip from a silent movie, or show them a video or a scene from a television show with the sound turned off. Then ask if they can tell what's going on, and what the characters are feeling. Ask them how they know.
A related activity is to divide the class into small groups and have each group come up with their own skit to act out in front of the class. Ask them to act out specific emotions and actions, and have the other students draw conclusions from non-verbal clues.
Children often have trouble understanding the difference between a fact and an inference. One fun way to teach this skill is to bring a bunch of photographs to class. First, ask the students to write down, in list form, everything they see in the photo. Next, have them look at the photographs again and write sentences about what they think is going on in the photographs. How do the things they can see in the photograph help them to infer information that isn't explicitly shown?
Comic books are becoming the latest way to teach reading comprehension skills, including how to draw conclusions. With their graphics-heavy format, comic books present excellent opportunities to teach students how to infer unstated meaning by using visual context clues. One activity that works well is to blank out one of the boxes in a comic book panel, and ask students to use the other panels to figure out what is happening in the box they can't see.