Word Detectives

One of the skills that we are working hard on this week is using context clues to determine meaning.  I tell my kiddos that they are “Word Detectives,” and just like police detectives look for clues, it is their job to look for clues to help them determine the meaning of a word.  The first thing we did was work together to make this anchor chart….

Oh. My. Goodness…I can’t even tell you how much fun they had doing this.  I gave them the sentence and we brainstormed words that could fit.  Then I gave them the same sentence with additional clues that narrowed it down to only one possibility.  They LOVED it!  After we made the chart I read aloud this book…

Another HOMERUN!  They ate this book up.  It is filled with “alien,” words and they had so much fun trying to figure out what each of the words meant.  You can click on the picture above to see it on Amazon!
Finally, we went back to our desks and did an activity to practice using context clues.  They were lovin the made up words so much that we used an activity from my “Becoming Word Detectives,” pack. We used context clues to determine what zerples, ermps, and faffen might be.  It always makes my heart happy when I hear things like, “this is so much fun,” as they are actually working hard to learn something!