Cloze Passages are a versatile tool that can be applied in specific ways to gather data in a variety of ways. These passages can be treated like traditional gap-fill exercises or you can delete every 5th word, for example, to gather different data sets. These passages have proven their worth and with some creativity, they can still be an interesting and valuable tool in your toolkit!

Cloze Passages can help teachers:

• Assess vocabulary, grammar, conjunctions, or any number of other skills

• Gain immediate feedback through the use of mini-whiteboards or even thumbs/ABCD cards

• Provide formative tasks which can be duplicated summatively at the end of a unit

• Providing students with a word bank can help students, or by increasing the options can be used to increase the challenge

• Students may not be able to write or read well, so Cloze Passages can be completed verbally or with assistance from the teacher

• Cloze Passages can be used to assess meaning in a paragraph by removing every set number word

• These passages can also be written "Mad Libs" style with prompts for students to generate their own paragraphs to meet a request

• Students can create their own passages to share with a partner or group