Craft Lesson #3

USING CONTEXT CLUES

RESOURCE MATERIALS:
Los Gatos Black on Halloween by Marisa Montes
Pencil and Paper

DISCUSSION
Some words in stories may be unfamiliar to the reader. The author will include words, phrases, or pictures that will help with the understanding of the new word. These counterparts in the story are called context clues. Context clues can help a reader fully engage in a story. Context clues will also help you better comprehend the story.

HOW TO TEACH IT (2nd or 3rd grade)
I want to talk to you today about using context clues in stories to understand unfamiliar words. Context clues are hints that the author gives to help define a difficult or unusual word. The clue may appear within the same sentence as the word to which it refers, or it may be in a preceding or subsequent sentence. Sometimes you can look at a picture to help you find out what the unfamiliar word is. Because most of your vocabulary is gained through reading, it is important that you be able to recognize and take advantage of context clues. By using context clues, you will be able to figure out any part of the story you do not understand. In the story named Los Gatos Black on Halloween, there are a lot of Spanish words that you may not be familiar with. However, by reading ahead, looking at the words around the unfamiliar word, or looking at pictures in the story you will be able to figure out the meaning of the unfamiliar word. Today, I am going to read you Los Gatos Black on Halloween. As we come across any Spanish words in the story we are going to stop and talk about what we think it means based on the context clues in the story. You may figure out the Spanish word by reading ahead, looking at the words around it, or looking at the pictures. For each Spanish word that we come across, I want you to write the word down and what you think the meaning of the word is based off the context clues. These papers will then be turned in after the lesson is over.Using context clues will help improve your reading skills. By using context clues, you can increase your vocabulary, save yourself a trip to the dictionary, and improve your overall reading comprehension.