South Dakota ELA 9-10.RH.4

ELAGrades 9–10Reading: History/Social Studies

The Standard

Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including domain-specific and content-specific vocabulary describing political, social, or economic aspects of history/social studies.

South Dakota English Language Arts Standards (2025) · Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects

Teacher's field guide

What This Standard Means

What Students Need to Do: Students use nearby sentences and the historical setting to work out unfamiliar words in history texts. They explain what a word means in that passage and point to clues that support their answer.
What Mastery Looks Like: A student can explain that trust means a group of businesses under shared control in a passage about the 1890s. They point to details about prices and competitors, rather than relying on the everyday meaning of trust.
Common Misconceptions: Students may read trust as personal confidence or capital as a city when the passage is about business. They may guess from the word alone and ignore nearby clues.
How to Assess It: Give this exit ticket: “In 1890, Congress passed a law against trusts. Several companies had joined under one group, controlled prices, and shut out competitors.” Ask students what trusts means here and which two details helped them decide.

Lesson moves

Ways to Teach It

Give pairs a printed paragraph about 1890 trusts; have them circle trust and place sticky notes beside two clues to its meaning.
Ask students to write: “Why does trust mean a business group here, not confidence?” Require two clues from the paragraph.
Play a card-matching game with trust, capital, and strike, historical sentences, and definitions; require a clue before each match.
Show two competing cereal brands in a store flyer, then ask how a historical trust might affect their prices.

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