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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 

CANVASS

DEFINITION:
A systematic approach to interviewing residents, merchants, and others who are in the immediate vicinity of a crime and may have useful information.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
In a press release, police said Lewisville Fire Department officials pronounced the man deceased on the scene. Police started a homicide investigation immediately, and canvassed the area in search of witnesses.
The Denton Record-Chronicle, 09/14/2026

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. Symbiosis

A relationship of mutual benefit or dependence.

Consuming or eager to consume great amounts of food; ravenous.

To honor the memory of with a ceremony

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


2. Salmonella

To rejoice greatly; be jubilant or triumphant

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

An unstable, poisonous allotrope of oxygen.

To have a great ambition or ultimate goal


3. Formidable

To have a great ambition or ultimate goal

A disorderly commotion or disturbance.

A very large and destructive wave, generally caused by a tremendous disturbance in the ocean, such as an undersea earthquake or volcanic eruption.

Inspiring awe, admiration, or wonder


4. Solstice

Either of two times of the year when the sun is at its greatest distance from the celestial equator.

The main character in a drama or other literary work.

Strikingly unconventional and far-fetched in style or appearance; odd

A cult or religious movement, a group sharing particular (often unorthodox) political and/or religious beliefs.


5. Tariff

A schedule of prices or fees.

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

Of, relating to, or occurring in the night

Harmful, malevolent, injurious. Harmfully cancerous.


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