Let's Talk Vocab

Fast Llamas, 
Hey, today we talking about a reading strategy called, 10 Most Important Words. In social studies, primary sources are killers for kids. This strategy aims to help kids decipher through all those vocabulary words and get to talking about them.  While I am using for Social Studies, every content can benefit from this strategy to get kids talking, build word walls, assess existing knowledge, teach kids to think and review.

Here is the strategy bit by bit:
Students identify the ten key terms or ideas from a passage and explain why each is important. 

Part 1: Introduction & Strategy Script

Warm-Up: Ask students: "If you had to describe the game of basketball using only three words, what would they be?" Have a few students share and explain why they chose those words.

Introduce the Strategy:

“Your job is to act like a detective and find the 10 words that hold all the clues. These can't be 'filler' words like 'and', 'the', or 'is'. They must be words that are essential to the meaning. If you took them out, the passage wouldn't make sense.

The hardest part isn't finding 10 words—it's only picking 10. This forces you to decide what is most important.”

1. Provide students with a table for their words
2. Have students read a passage.
3. On the second reading of the passage, students circle 10 words they believe are important to understand the text.
4. Students list their words on the provided table and justify 5 out of the 10.
5. Discuss whole group. 

Here is an example of a passage:

Passage: Bridges and Borders: Comparing Central and South America

Central America is a narrow stretch of countries and islands that links North and South America, where people live in both tropical rainforests and small mountain towns and where cultures mix Indigenous, European, African, and Asian traditions; South America is a vast continent with the towering Andes, the wide Amazon rainforest, and large countries like Brazil and Argentina, offering more varied climates and bigger cities. Both regions share languages (mostly Spanish and Portuguese), foods like corn and plantains, and histories shaped by colonization and Indigenous resistance, but they differ in size, geography, and how people make a living—many Central Americans farm on smaller plots or work in coastal trade, while South America has huge agricultural estates, major mining industries, and extensive river systems that shape travel and settlement.

Since vocabulary can be tricky for kids, this focus on terms needed to understand the text is great practice.  Try it out!