I've just started doing some tutoring, only had 2 sessions so far, it's my first time tutoring.

One of the things I've got the kids (B4/B5 - both speak/read pretty well) doing, is to read a paragraph out loud from something random a couple of times (atm it's a copy / paste from travelfish about Singapore since they're going there in 2 weeks). Then I get them to underline the words which they don't understand, and I've been asking them what they "think" the word might mean, getting them to read the sentence again, and getting them to guess etc. If they don't understand it, I'll then explain it (and/or look up the Thai word in a dictionary)

But the problem is, they are usually too shy to guess it, or maybe they just aren't used to thinking in this way.

So I was thinking maybe I can get some advice from you lot about ways to overcome this hurdle. Since I assume it's a common problem. I asked one of the Thai teachers here about it, and they just said "Remember they're not native speakers, it might not work for them", which imo shouldn't be a problem.

I've been thinking about about doing was a close exercise (think that's what they're called lol, the ones with missing words), and getting them to maybe read the complete version, and then I'd give them the close exercise of the same material, and get them to put an alternative word word in (maybe words which I supply that are similar to the proper words (but words which they would be more likely to know)).

Or would I be better to do a close exercise using all words which they know, to kind of "train their brain" to look at the sentence context first?

What other types of exercises/games do you think I could give them to help them to think in this way?

I like your idea of the close exercise. That is close to correct it is actually a cloze exercise. I think I will steal your idea for myself thank you.

Google 'How to teach guided reading'.

Do the same for Youtube as well.