Assignment 1: Selecting Key Vocabulary from a Reading

Which vocabulary words will your students study in a reading?

e to Ln?
With every reading, students have the opportunity to learn new vocabulary words. For teachers,
it is sometimes difficult to know which words to select from a reading passage. The following
technique for selecting key vocabulary allows teachers an opportunity to reflect on the important
words in a reading. Once the important words have been identified, teachers can provide a
vocabulary list with definitions for students before they begin reading the text. Okay, let’s try this
technique.

Directions for participants:

1. Open Reading for Assignment 1. This is a reading about body art like tattoos and
piercings.
2. Read. While you are reading, write down unknown words that you believe are important
for main idea comprehension.
3. After reading, practice putting words from the reading into three levels (level 1 words,
level 2 words, and level 3 words). Before you do this, read about the levels below.

Level 1 words:
- Words in the title
- Words in the headings
- The main verb in a sentence
- Words that are an important part of the main idea

Level 2 words:
- The do-er of the sentence; the noun that is “doing” the verb action
- Common words you’ve heard or read many times before, but don’t
understand
- Words that make it impossible for you to understand the first sentence of a
paragraph
 Hint: the first sentence of a paragraph is often the “topic sentence,” which
includes important information about the subject of the paragraph

Level 3 words:
- Proper nouns (the names of people, cities, countries, languages,
organizations, etc.)
 Hint: proper nouns always begin with a capital letter (Paris,
India, Harvard University)
- Words that you can ignore or hide with your finger and still understand the
meaning of the sentence.

© 2016 by Northern Arizona University. Selecting Key Vocabulary from a Reading for the AE E-Teacher Program, sponsored by
the U.S. Department of State and administered by FHI 360. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License,
except where noted. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This is a program of the U.S. Department of State administered by FHI 360 and delivered by Northern Arizona University.
 Scan the reading by quickly looking for the words below (external, permanent, Moari,
symbolize, altered).
4. Identify if the words are level 1, level 2, or level 3 words. And, based on the information
provided about the levels, explain why.

• external: _______________________

Why? ____________________________________________________

• permanent: _______________________

Why? ____________________________________________________

• Maori: _______________________

Why? ____________________________________________________

• symbolize: _______________________

Why? ____________________________________________________

• altered: _______________________

Why? ____________________________________________________

5. Now go back to the reading and find the words that you underlined or highlighted.
Classify these words as Level 1, Level 2, or Level 3.

My unknown Level 1 words My unknown Level 2 words

This is a program of the U.S. Department of State administered by FHI 360 and delivered by Northern Arizona University.
 6. Make a vocabulary list of 7 – 10 words based on your level 1 and level 2 words for this
reading.

Vocabulary List: Skin, the Body’s Canvas.

This is a program of the U.S. Department of State administered by FHI 360 and delivered by Northern Arizona University.