Assess Vocabulary with Cloze Passages

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After teaching a new concept, it's necessary to assess students' overall understanding and comprehension. When the instruction includes a heavy dose of new vocabulary, a cloze strategy works well.
At first glance, a cloze passage may appear to be a simple fill-in-the-blank worksheet. However, if teachers follow these five steps, they can develop a tool that measures students' comprehension of essential vocabulary.
STEP 1: List the key terms students should have mastered within the unit.
STEP 2: Generate a summary of the content covered, utilizing any or all of the domain-specific terms listed in Step 1.
STEP 3: Strikethrough the vocabulary words within the summary to produce the first draft of a cloze passage.
The purpose of this assessment is to measure students' understanding of a concept based on their ability to use domain-specific vocabulary accurately. However, in its current state, the summary will be too vague. For students to apply the correct vocabulary words within the right blanks, they must monitor the cloze passage for meaning. Consequently, the sentences must provide context clues that indicate which word fits where.
STEP 4: Reread the initial summary and insert details, synonyms, examples, and explanations that would help students infer what word fits the context of the sentence. (There are several types of context clues. These are the same details students use when they are inferring the meaning of any unfamiliar word within their reading.)
STEP 5: The final step is to rewrite the summary incorporating these additional context clues and deleting the vocabulary terms themselves. Plan to add a title to the cloze passage, as it provides students a starting point or main idea to initially focus their thinking. It's also not a bad idea to share the final cloze passage with a colleague before administering it to students. This provides a quick check that there are enough details to infer the intended terms.
Introduce cloze-passages
Before giving the first cloze-passage assessment, introduce this strategy within a few whole-class activities. Explain that the passage itself provides "clues" that will help students infer the omitted words.
Be sure to reveal the types of context clues that will support their inferring. Also, clarify that these clues often come within the sentence but may appear in the sentence before or after the blank, too.
For younger grades, execute this whole-class activity with the sentences written on sentence strips and displayed within a pocket chart. Put the vocabulary words on separate index cards and post them on the board for all to see. Begin to read the cloze passages, and as students discuss which term best fits the context, move the index cards around the pockets allowing students to physically see the words within each sentence.
For those classrooms with interactive whiteboards, the key words might be blocked out or covered up with a box. Then, when working through the passage with students, write in their suggested answers. After finishing the entire passage, slide their answers above the line of text and delete the box revealing the correct vocabulary word.
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[@AriaTuition]

Very informative! A tip is to read all the options and eliminate the least suitable options!

[@michaelnjoroge6436]

Well and good do more videos kindly

[@rubyjulskiantv512]

Thank you so much ma,am ❤❤

[@user-bm7ix1jt5v]

I like your lesson

[@samipakchitra9944]

🙏🙏🙏

[@Ninajoy-rt6zc]

So helpful and thanks

[@miilamb2044]

Cloze passages aren't easy but thinking critically is necessary.

[@selmamutiara747]

It’s really helpful for me to conduct a research. Thank you, Madam.

[@SmekensEducation]

Selma--You are very welcome. We wish you well in your research.

[@MrIlayarajaraju]

really helpful

[@SmekensEducation]

Thank you for your kind comment! The article that complements this video includes several downloadable resources.www.smekenseducation.com/Assess-Vocabulary-with-Cloze-Passages.html

[@saptarshimondal6917]

I am a teacher well done i am gonna use this in pates grammer school

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[@SmekensEducation]

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[@SmekensEducation]

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[@barinderchadha9647]

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[@SmekensEducation]

Thanks @Barinder!