Craft Lesson #1

USING CONTEXT CLUES

Materials:
La Mariposa
Pencil and Paper

DISCUSSION:
Throughout literature there are words used in stories that often times the reader does not understand. This is especially true with childrens literature due to the fact that children have a more limited vocabulary compared to adults. In these cases it would be a valuable tool to know how to use the context clues given by the author to discover the meaning of the unfamiliar word. The author uses other words, phrases, or even illustrations to assist the reader in learning the meaning of the word. According to TEK's, children in grades 1-3 should be able to "use knowledge of word order (syntax) and context to support word identification and meaning".

HOW TO TEACH IT: (Grades 1-3)
Today I am going to talk to you about context clues. Have you ever been reading a book and come across a word that you did not know what it meant? (Wait for responses.) What did you do to try to learn the meaning of the unknown word? (Wait for responses.) Well today we are going to learn a new way to figure out what a unfamiliar word means, so that in the future you can figure out those tricky words for yourself. Context clues are clues or hints that the author gives you to help you figure out the meaning of the word you do not understand. The author does this through several ways. Sometimes the clue with appear in the same sentence as the unknown word, and if you continuing reading the sentence you can discover the meaning of the word. It is not always in the same sentence as the unknown word, however, sometimes it is in the sentence before or after the sentence that has the unknown word. Another way to learn the meaning of an unknown word is to look at the picture. If you are reading a book with pictures this is one of the best way to figure out what the word means. In the story I chose for today, La Mariposa, there are Spanish words mixed in with English words, and I want you to use context clues to figure out the meaning of the Spanish words. When we come to a Spanish word in the story we will stop briefly to discuss what we think the meaning is and why. At that time write the Spanish word on your paper, what you think it means, and a brief reason why you think it means that. Remember that you can look for context clues in the pictures or the sentences. Once we are finished we will combine all of our definitions to come up with the best definition for each of the Spanish words and write these definitions on the chalk board. We will then use the glossary that is at the end of the book to learn the real definitions to the words, and we can see how accurate our definitions based on context clues are.