This activity is the most common activity for context clues. A multiple choice worksheet is a great medium to test students on context clues. Each question should be a long sentence or two with one underlined word. The underlined word should be defined in the sentence with synonyms or reference clues. The multiple choice answers should be different in terms of definition, so students aren't picking the best out of several close answers.
Tables are a great way for students to organize information, and context clues can fully be explored within a graphic organizer. Create a graphic organizer for every new text or short story used in class. The organizer should be in table form with six columns and enough rows for each new vocabulary word. The six columns should consist of the following: sentence with new word from story, word parts, prediction of word meaning, dictionary meaning, way to remember the meaning and a column for the vocabulary word.
This is a good activity to end a context clues unit to assess student comprehension. A cloze text is a text where words have been removed and replaced with blanks. Take a passage of at least 40 words from a new text on the appropriate reading level. Take out every five or six words and leave a blank. Have students read the passage and fill in the blanks with the appropriate word. Some answers will vary, but the goal is for the students to be able to produce the same context of the original passage.
This is a funny activity to help students get into context clue lessons. Teachers can create a very understandable passage except for a few nonsense words. The nonsense words have no meaning alone, but in a passage full of context clues, students should guess the meanings. This is a fun activity to put on a poster board or a chalkboard, so that all students can participate at once. Also, teachers could assign students to make up passages with nonsense words to give to other students.