Cloze Activities: A Helpful Addition to a Reading or Language Arts Classroom

If you are an educator, chances are you have heard the term "cloze activity". A cloze activity, also known as a cloze, is essentially a fill-in-the-blank worksheet which can be completed by students. They are called cloze activities because they serve as the transition tool or closing point for a unit of study. Its purpose is either to help build vocabulary or key terms. The teacher writes a paragraph or passage, and then eliminates several choice words; the students therefore must fill in the blanks by using reading comprehension and their recall of recent material taught in class. Cloze activities serve as a great assessment tool for teachers; for they allow you to see which students have grasped recent material. They are also a change of pace from a typical graphic organizer.

While recently teaching a lesson on business letters to my sixth grade class, I created a cloze activity. My finished product is as follows. Feel free to reproduce for your own classroom, replacing the words in bold with blanks. A word bank can be included as well, if desired.

Business Letter Cloze Activity

Directions: Fill in the following blanks with key terms from our lesson on business letter writing.

In a business letter, you share or ask for information. You may be requesting something, complaining about a problem, or stating your opinion.

When writing a business letter, you should keep it short (also accept concise). Do not go on and on about your subject.

There are six main parts of a business letter. The heading is at the beginning. It includes the sender's address and the date. Next is the inside address, which is the address of the place or person you are writing to. Another word for the greeting is the salutation. Be sure to end it with a colon, not a comma. If a business letter were a hamburger, the body would be the meat. It contains all the details. The closing comes after the body and can include an expression such as "Yours truly" or "Sincerely". End the closing with a comma. Finally comes the signature, which is your name.

Cloze activities can be adapted to correspond with any topic or content area. They help students learn to use context clues and better their vocabulary. If you are interested in creating your very own cloze activities for your own class, be sure to check out http://edhelper.com/cloze.htm

This web site contains a template where you can plug in all your information and have a printable cloze activity created at the touch of a button!