This document discusses contextual clues, which are hints an author provides within a text to help define difficult or unusual words. It provides examples of made-up words like "gollygoop" and "pigglywiggly" and encourages analyzing the context of a sentence to determine the meaning of an unfamiliar word based on clues from the surrounding text. Readers are instructed to reread before and after an unfamiliar word, consider the meaning of surrounding words, and check if their guessed meaning makes sense in the context of the full sentence and passage.

1. CONTEXTUAL CLUES
Hints that an author gives
to help define a difficult or
unusual word within a text

2. Can you guess the meaning of these
words?
The kids GOLLYGOOP down the hall like wild
horses.
My mom WOOSPIEDOOS her keys and now she
can’t go to work.
The door was PIGGLYWIGGLY, so we called Mr.
Williams to open it for us.

3. After dinner, I was so MOOZLED
from the day’s busy activities that I
fell asleep two hours before my
bedtime. I woke up feeling hungry
the next morning and SEBBERLY ate
breakfast.
Try this!

4. Let’s attack the word!
SEBBERLY ate breakfast
I was so MOOZLED

5. Reread &
read
ahead
1 Identify
context
clues
2 Decide on
a
meaning
3 Check
meaning
in context
4
Stop and
reread the
words that
come
before and
after the
unfamiliar
word
Think
about the
meaning of
the words
in the text
that
surround
the
unfamiliar
word
Use what
you know
from the
context to
make an
educated
guess
about the
meaning of
the
unfamiliar
word.
The
meaning
you
decided on
should
make
sense in
the
sentence
and in
relation to
the main
idea of the