Most Important Word

The strategy I claimed in class today is Most Important Word from Chapter 8: "Extending Meaning: After-Reading Strategies."Most Important Word involves having students choose what they believe is the most important word from a piece of text. After choosing the word, students need to defend their choice in a class debate. This strategy can be left fairly unstructured for independent readers who are able to decipher the main idea of a text and cite supporting evidence. For dependent or struggling readers, Beers provides a Most Important Word worksheet as these students may need a more structured approach to unpacking the text and developing an argument. A student example of the worksheet is found on page 174 and the blank worksheet can be found in Appendix F. Beers (2003) explains the literary elements that are explored on the worksheet: "With this form, students consider how the word affects the characters, conflict, plot, and setting. From that, they use this word to help them formulate a theme statement." (p.175)

I chose this strategy because I think it could be very useful in a poetry lesson. Teaching poetry is still something that slightly intimidates me, so I'm always looking for useful classroom strategies. Diction is important in any text, but is especially crucial in analyzing poetry. Most Important Word could be an excellent strategy to teach students about the usefulness of considering diction to understand a poem. Students would choose a word form the poem and then explain how this one word impacts the characters, setting, plot, conflict, and theme of the poem. It would be important to explain to students that there is not one correct answer for this exercise. They should simply choose the word that they believe best illuminates the meaning of the poem and then defend their choice considering the elements listed on the worksheet.

Finally, I wanted to share a way that I thought of to take this strategy one step further. Class debates are an excellent activity to scaffold argument writing and to practice persuasive discourse. Many students, however, need a lesson on persuasive language before they can successfully partake in a debate or write a persuasive essay. I'm thinking specifically about ELLs. As I've mentioned in class, I am especially interested in ELLs. My Scoop It project revolves around how teachers can help ELLs to meet the Common Core Standards. The resources I've found so far all recommend incorporating mini language lessons into a larger content lesson whenever possible. Most Important Word is an excellent opportunity to give a short lesson about persuasive language. The teacher could model such sentences as: "I believe the most important word is...," I chose this word because...," "My claim is supported with the following evidence...," "This line is evidence of...". This is a quick lesson that could be left up on the Smart Board or classroom wall for students to reference when they defend their words in speech or writing. Depending on the grade level, all students, not just ELLs, would benefit from such language instruction.


Beers, K. (2003). When Kids Can't Read What Teachers Can Do. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.