Context Clues

Usually in a children’s book, the author will put context clues in the writing to help the reader understand a higher level word.

Here are some examples:

Read the sentence before:

They went to a large room in the bottom of the house. The children hoped to find the puppy in the basement.

Basement means a large room in the bottom of a house.

Read the sentence after:

The librarian helped the children find an interesting book about arachnids. They wanted to learn more about spiders for a science unit.

Arachnids are spiders.

Find the clue in the sentence:

The agenda or list of items to talk about for the meeting was short.

An agenda is a list of items to talk about.

If your child is having difficulties understanding what they are reading, they may need to slow down, re-read, and look for clues.

If that doesn’t help, having a dictionary close by is essential. After they looked up the word and found the definition, they should go back to their reading and look for similar words so they can see how there was a clue in the reading.

Books that Increase a Child’s Skill at Using Context Clues

A Woggle of Witches written by A. Adams

Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing written by J Barrett

Arthur’s Christmas Cookies written by Marc Brown

The Fireflies written by Eric Carle

May I Bring a Friend written by B. S. DeRegniers

Drummer Hof written by B. A. Emberley

One Fine Day written by N. Hogrogian

Good-Night Owl written by N. Hogrogian

The Snowy Day written by E. Keats

Peter’s Chair written by E. Keats

Goggles written by E. Keats

Leo, The Late Bloomer written by Steve Kellogg

The Mystery of the Missing Red Mitten written by Steve Kellogg

The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard and her Dog

written by A. Lobel

The Bear’s Toothache written by D. McPhail

Where the Wild Things Are written by Maurice Sendak

Noisy Nora written by Maurice Sendak

To leave your comments or to suggest more books about context clues, click here.