Cloze Activities

These are the reasons why cloze activities are beneficial.

Reasons Why

It uses sentence and context structure to find meaning of unknown word in context.
It uses context to successfully detemine the missing words in a passage.
It develops understanding why context is important.
It supports prior knowledge by utilizing highly predictable text, or previously read text.
It builds on specific reading strategies by deleting selected cues (i.e. nouns/verbs for meaning clues, pronouns for sentence structure, and letter/s for phonics).

Teacher Prep.

First decide what the purpose is of the activity. You can prepare the text by using the following.
- Letters and letter clusters should be deleted to encourage the use of phonics clues (i.e., those derived from letter sound relationships).
- Function word, such as conjunctions, prepositions, and pronouns, help students focus on the structure of the sentence.
- Content words, such as nouns, verbs, require the use of meaning in the sentence.

Delete every fifth word or the type of word on which you have chosen to focus.

For most students, passages written at their instructional level provide the appropriate level of difficulty.

Types Of Examples To Use

Literature Books/Story Books

Henry and Mudge

"One night Henry and his f____ were watching TV. Suddenly M____ ran to the door barking. When Henry's father opened the d____, they saw the s____ cat they had ever seen. And it looked terrible."

Poems

Homework Oh, Homework

"Homework! Oh, homework! I h____ you! You stink! I wish I could w____ you away in the sink. Only if a b____ could explode you to bits. Homework! Oh, homework! You're g____ me fits."

Fairy Tales/Folk Tales

The Three Little Pigs

"Once upon a time there were three little pigs. One day the three little pigs left home. Each little pig wanted to build a ____. The first little pig mad a house of ____. The second little pig made a house of ____. The third little pig mad a house of ____."

Nursery Ryhmes

Mary Had a Little Lamb

"Mary had a little ____. It's fleece was white as ____. Everywhere that Mary went the ____ was sure to go."

Songs

There Was an Old Lady

"There was on old lady who swallowed a ____. I don't know why she ____ a fly, perhaps she'll die. There was on old lady who swallowed a ____. That ____ and wriggled and jiggled inside her. She swallowed the spider to ____ the fly. I don't know why she swallowed a fly, perhaps she'll ____.