screen capture of cloze activity

Cloze

A fill-in-the-blanks activity where the learner uses clues to supply omitted words

Samples

Personal Protective Equipment

An example of a cloze activity using text entry.

Source Certificate I in Transport and Distribution (Road Transport) on the Victorian TAFE Virtual Campus, dveloped by Swinburne TAFE
URL TAFEVC unit/module description
Use Follow Occupational Health and Safety Procedures - TDTF197A
Delivery Copy of this course can be delivered on a WebCT platform or other Learning Management system
Customisation This course was designed to be customised by the end user. All activities in web pages can be easily customised. Some Flash interactions need high level skills for customisation
Availability This unit is available to Victorian RTOs from the TAFE Virtual Campus. Other states and territories should contact AESharenet.

Spread multiple layers of fabric

An example of a fill in the blanks exercise using drag and drop.

Source Textiles, Clothing and Footwear Flexible Learning Toolbox (Toolbox), developed by Challenger TAFE, Western Australia
URL http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/toolbox/
demosites/series5/515/pages/units/
cut2/act3/page02.htm
Use Certificates I, II and III in Clothing Production
Delivery Can be delivered using a CD or loaded into a learning management system (LMS) such as WebCT or Blackboard.
Customisation The material in this Toolbox has been developed to allow for customisation. However this activity is not easily customised.
Availability Details of how to purchase this Toolbox are available on the Flexible Learning Toolbox site.

Why include cloze?

Cloze activities can be used to develop word recognition and prediction skills. They also offer subject teachers opportunities to assess the learner's grasp of subject content. Importantly they require learners to engage with the text on a number of layers (semantic/syntactic), to draw on background knowledge and to develop a range of strategies for interpreting written information.

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Integrating cloze

Design steps

As you develop a cloze activity for your learners you should consider the following steps:

  • Choose texts that provide sufficient clues and supporting information to aid word identification.
  • Use texts at an appropriate reading level for your learners.
  • Select an appropriate number of words to delete. Don't make it so difficult that it becomes a guessing activity.
  • Leave all the words in the first 2-3 sentences of the text to let the readers get well into the passage and to set the context.
  • Provide clear instuctions to the learner about using online functions (what to do to get a hint, how to check their answers).

Assessment

Cloze can be used as both an assessment task to determine level of comprehension as well as a learning activity.

Technical notes

To develop online cloze activities you need:

  • a dedicated software package (see in Tools and resourceas below)
  • a server to host the finished cloze activity, either:
    • an LMS (such as WebCT, Blackboard or Janison) which incorporates the cloze into an integrated learning sequence, or
    • a stand alone website.

Skills

Developing online cloze activities is well within the range of most teachers, trainers and developers. The software packages used to develop activities are generally easy to learn and apply. You may need some assistance in publishing the cloze activity to a website if you don't usually do this.

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See also

From the Framework

More resources from the Australian Flexible Learning Framework

Tools and resources

  • Hot Potatoes
    The Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications which enable you to create interactive activities:
    • quizzes (true/false, multiple choice)
    • drag and drop activities
    • crosswords
    • jumbled sentence
    • drag and drop/matching/order
    • cloze activities.
    The published activity is a web page that can then be incorporated into any online product (such as an LMS) or emailed to learners.
    Hot Potatoes is free for educational use. Some restrictions apply.
    http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com/index.phpwith direct link at http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/hotpot/index.htm
  • Parapal Authoring Suite
    Creates cloze and crosswords. It will create all of the necessary files when an exercise is saved and create a HTML index page with the puzzle embedded using Flash. The whole directory can then be uploaded to an LMS, blog, wiki or other web server for use.
    http://www.parapal-online.co.uk/resources/cloze_download.html
  • Creating cloze exercises in Moodle
    The Moodle LMS has a cloze tool that users can use to develop cloze exercises inside the course space. You can also upload quizzes made with Hot Potatoes and make them available to learners using the Quiz module in Moodle.
    http://docs.moodle.org/en/Cloze

Social bookmark for this strategy

http://del.icio.us/designelearn/cloze

Last modified: 11/6/08