Vocabulary in context: teaching kids to work out new words
How to help children use clues in a sentence to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words while reading.
Children meet new words in almost every text they read. Stopping to look each one up breaks the flow. Learning to use context clues lets them make a good guess and keep reading.
What are context clues?
Context clues are hints in the sentence or nearby sentences that help explain a word. For example: "The desert is arid. It hardly ever rains there." The second sentence tells us arid means very dry.
Common types of clue
- Definition: the text explains the word directly.
- Example: "Reptiles, such as snakes and lizards, ..."
- Opposite: "Unlike his noisy brother, Ben was timid."
- Picture: diagrams and photos in nonfiction often show what a word means.
A simple routine
- Read the whole sentence again.
- Read the sentence before and after.
- Make a guess.
- Put the guess in place of the word. Does the sentence still make sense?