Context Clues

CONTEXT CLUES

TEACHING IDEA:
The book Baloney (Henry P.) by Jon Sciezka is GREAT for context clues. It's about a little martian (or some other alien) boy who makes up a story about why he's late for school. In his story, you're introduced to crazy words (pencil is zimulis, door is pordo) and have to use pictures, sentence context, and sounds to figure out what he means. There's a "glossary" in the back and you learn that the words are actually real words from different languages. When I teach the lesson, I give the kids a list of the words and read through the story one time with no discussion. I let them guess on their paper (but I don't make them write if they can't keep up - it just frustrates them, slows down the process, and zaps the fun out of it) Then, I'll read the story a second time and pause with each new word and let them share their guesses. We discuss WHY we guessed what we did and how different clues led us to the right (or wrong) definition.
They love it! Idea submitted by Tobi Layton

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