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Common Core State Standard
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.
This Week's Word In The News 

MITIGATION

DEFINITION:
The action of reducing the severity, seriousness, or painfulness of something.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
But after years of record investment by the state in such wildfire risk mitigation, two key money sources are drying up, potentially reducing the state’s annual budget for vegetation removal by hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Los Angeles Times, 06/01/2026

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. Vacillate

A characteristic rate or rhythm of activity; a pace

Forfeiture of something highly valued for the sake of one considered to have a greater value or claim.

A weather phenomenon in the Eastern Pacific that is precisely equivalent to a hurricane.

To swing indecisively from one course of action or opinion to another.


2. Enthusiastic

Sharing the same opinions or views; being in complete harmony or accord.

An elevated, comparatively level expanse of land; a tableland.

Having or demonstrating enthusiasm

One that speaks for, represents, or advocates


3. Hologram

The method or result of concealing personnel or equipment from an enemy by making them appear to be part of the natural surroundings

Any of various relatively small sailing or motor-driven vessels used for pleasure cruises or racing.

The pattern produced on a photosensitive medium that has been exposed by holography and then photographically developed.

The right or privilege of voting; franchise.


4. Phloem

Any of various nonplacental mammals, including kangaroos, opossums, bandicoots, and wombats, found principally in Australia and the Americas.

An unstable, poisonous allotrope of oxygen.

The food-conducting tissue of vascular plants, consisting of sieve tubes, fibers, parenchyma, and sclereids.

Any of several rod-shaped bacteria, of the genus Salmonella, that cause food poisoning and other diseases.


5. Undulate

One that takes in everything available, as with the mind.

To move in waves or with a smooth, wavelike motion.

A rebirth or revival.

An ammunition belt, worn over the shoulder, having loops or pockets for cartridges.


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