LS.CCS.4/5/6 Grades 3-12: Students are asked to determine the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words through multiple choice vocabulary quizzes. Quizzes are designed to help students demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships and nuances in words, acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific words, and gather vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression. Students are then asked to find the words within the newspaper and copy the sentence for context to its overall meaning or function in a sentence.
Words in the News Quiz
5 Middle School Words
Click on the correct answer in the quiz below.
Then see if you can find the word in your newspaper -- the print edition, the website or the digital edition and copy the sentence for context. NOTE: High School words are much harder to find!
1. Lichen
► An embankment built to prevent flooding
► To swing indecisively from one course of action or opinion to another.
► In a deplorable state of distress or misfortune; miserable.
► A fungus, usually of the class Ascomycetes, that grows symbiotically with algae,
2. Mutation
► An alteration or change, as in nature, form, or quality.
► One who habitually takes advantage of the generosity of others without making any useful return.
► Having no specific pattern, purpose, or objective.
3. Labyrinth
► Having no specific pattern, purpose, or objective.
► Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar.
4. Metaphor
► A prohibition by a government on certain or all trade with a foreign nation
► The act of resting or the state of being at rest.
► One thing conceived as representing another; a symbol.
5. Spectrum
► A weather phenomenon in the Eastern Pacific that is precisely equivalent to a hurricane.
► A person authorized to act as representative for another; a deputy.
► The distribution of energy emitted by a radiant source, arranged in order of wavelengths.