South Dakota ELA 7.L.6.a

ELA7th GradeLanguage

The Standard

7.L.6: Acquire and use grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific words and phrases.

Research words and gather vocabulary knowledge.

South Dakota English Language Arts Standards (2025)

Teacher's field guide

What Students Need to Do: Students find unfamiliar words in a text and look them up in a dictionary or other reference. They record the meaning that fits the sentence and note a clue or example that helps them remember it.
What Mastery Looks Like: A student can choose the right meaning when a word has more than one definition and explain what in the text helped them decide. They can use the word correctly in a new sentence and keep a record to review.
Common Misconceptions: Students may copy the first dictionary meaning without checking the sentence. They may treat similar words as interchangeable or guess from a familiar word part without checking their guess.
How to Assess It: Give students this sentence: 'The hikers found the trail arduous after climbing three steep hills.' Ask them to look up 'arduous,' name a clue in the sentence, and use the word in a new sentence.

Lesson moves

Give pairs cards for 'reluctant' and 'scarce' plus print dictionaries; have them record each word's pronunciation, part of speech, and meaning.
Have students compare 'a cold draft' and 'a first draft,' then write which dictionary meaning fits each phrase.
Play a card match with 'bank,' 'current,' and 'charge'; students pair sample sentences with dictionary meanings and explain their choices.
Read a food package marked 'perishable'; have students look up the word and explain how it affects storage.

Free download

A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to 7.L.6.a, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.

PDF, US Letter, prints cleanly in black and white.

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