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Games and Exercises: Learning How to Use Context Clues

By J.L. Shanker|W. Cockrum
Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall

Who Am I

Purpose:   To develop or practice the ability to use context clues

Materials:  A set of prepared sentences with a noun left out and replaced with a blank

Procedure:

Present a sentence to the student or students with a noun replaced with a blank.

The _____ ran after the cat.

See if the student can provide a logical replacement for the missing noun.

Variations:

Replace verbs or other parts of speech.

Which Meaning Is It?

Purpose:  To develop or practice the ability to use context clues

Materials:  Prepare a list of homonyms and corresponding sentences in which each meaning of the homonym makes sense

Procedure:

Show the homonym to the student and ask (him or her) to provide a meaning for the word. Once the student has provided a meaning, show the student a sentence in which the word has a different meaning. Ask the student what the word means now.

For example, the homonym used is the word blue. You have two prepared sentences.

  1. I feel blue today.
  2. The car is blue.

The student says it is a color. You show the student the first sentence and ask what the word blue means in that sentence. The student needs to attempt to provide the new meaning for the word blue.

Variation:

Increase the amount of text to include more than one sentence. Have the defining context in a different sentence than the sentence in which the homonym is located.

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