Academic Vocabulary Support from Any Text: Three Prompts 📚

You have a text—an article, a transcript, an assignment, even your entire unit plan. Students need vocabulary support, but building structured practice takes time you don't have.

This workflow helps you extract key academic terms, format them for Quizlet import, and create meaningful student activities in about 5 minutes. The result: comprehensive vocabulary support you can use in class, share with colleagues, or give to specialists.

The Three Prompts

📝 Prompt 1: Review and Extract

I am working on developing some academic vocabulary supports for my students. My students are **_** (age, language background, learning needs, etc). Please help me by carefully reviewing the text below, and extracting all academic and content-specific vocabulary terms that my students need in order to deeply access the material.

[paste your text, article, transcript, or entire unit plan]

📤 Prompt 2: Quizlet-Ready List

Thank you! Now, can you please select the words that are most essential for students to be successful and create a vocabulary list formatted for easy copy and paste into Quizlet with one entry per line as shown below. The definition and example sentence should be student-friendly and contextual.

word: definition (example sentence with ____ for the target word)

🎯 Prompt 3: Student Activity (pick one or ALL)

A: Word Detective - Create a challenge where students choose 8 terms and find each word in authentic contexts. They record where they found it, the context, and how it helped them understand the word.

B: Vocabulary Flex - Design a challenge where students write [article/story/explanation] using 8 terms correctly and naturally. Include a simple rubric.

C: Teach-Back Cards - Create a template where students become class experts on 6-8 words. Each card includes: word, their definition, why it matters, and one quiz question to ask peers.

How to Adapt This 🔧

• Different text sources: Works with articles, transcripts, assignments, textbook chapters, or entire unit plans
• Different student needs: Adjust student descriptions in Prompt 1 to get age-appropriate, culturally responsive definitions
• Multiple activities: Run Prompt 3 three times (A, B, and C) to create a full activity menu
• Collaborative support: Share your Quizlet set with co-teachers, learning specialists, or department colleagues

What You'll Get ✨

This workflow creates everything you need for comprehensive vocabulary instruction:

• Complete list of academic and content-specific vocabulary extracted from your text
• Quizlet-ready format with student-friendly definitions and contextual example sentences
• Your choice of three engaging student activities: Word Detective (authentic context finding), Vocabulary Flex (creative writing), or Teach-Back Cards (peer teaching)

You'll have vocabulary support ready to use, easy to import to Quizlet, and shareable with anyone supporting your students.

🌳 Pro tip: To import to Quizlet: (1) Copy Prompt 2 output, (2) Go to quizlet.com/create-set, (3) Click "Import" → Paste → Set delimiter to "colon", (4) Done! Share the link with students and colleagues.

Want to see where this started? Check out the original #ThreePromptThursday LinkedIn post