Don't Cover That Word

When I first started teaching, I led my students through a popular activity called “Guess the covered word”. I would cover a word in a sentence and have the students use context to guess the covered word. Sometimes I would reveal the first letter. It didn't take long, and the children seemed to enjoy it. But after a while, I came to realize that this was not an effective teaching strategy. So what was the problem?

I began to notice that students were making wild guesses during reading, guesses that were totally at odds with the phonetic make up of the words on the page. A student might read, “The boy walked up the hill.” when the passage actually said, “The boy walked up the mountain.” Also, some students were only paying attention to the beginning of a word. They might read, “The girl sat in a cherry.” instead of “The girl sat in a chair.”

The problem with this activity, is that it is unrelated to what actually happens when we read. When was the last time you were reading a book or magazine and came across a covered word? The point of this activity is to encourage readers to attend to context clues. But, for the activity to work, the students need to know the word already. My “aha” moment came when I realized that I use context clues when I come to a word that I don't already know.

Instead of having students try to guess a covered word, I provide my students with sentences containing difficult or unusual words that they may not already know. For example:

1. To ignite a log is to set it on fire.

 

The students need to read the entire word and use context to figure out the meaning of the word. This is a more authentic reading experience. As a plus, my kids love it! They really get a kick out of being able to read “big kid” words. It's especially effective for my at risk readers. I keep the words phonetic so it's a huge confidence builder when they realize that they can read multi-syllable words.