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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 

SUREFIRE

DEFINITION:
Certain or likely, especially to succeed.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
Kirby taught himself how to count cards, a surefire way to get barred from gambling at a casino, “raking in money on trips to Atlantic City and Las Vegas,” the article stated.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal, 05/04/2026

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. Hypocrisy

A diffuse mass of interstellar dust or gas or both, visible as luminous patches or areas of darkness

A preparation of a weakened or killed pathogen.

The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.

The distance that light travels in a vacuum in one year.


2. Boycott

To abstain from or act together in abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with as an expression of protest or disfavor or as a means of coercion

An intricate structure of interconnecting passages through which it is difficult to find one’s way; a maze.

The distribution of energy emitted by a radiant source, arranged in order of wavelengths.

To have a great ambition or ultimate goal


3. Salmonella

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

Grossly offensive to decency or morality.

A person with masterly skill or technique in the arts.

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


4. Hieroglyphic

A person with masterly skill or technique in the arts.

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

To proclaim publicly

Relating to a system of writing, such as that of ancient Egypt, in which pictorial symbols are used to represent meaning or sounds or a combination of meaning and sound.


5. Ozone

The locus of points for which the sum of the distances from each point to two fixed points is equal

One that speaks for, represents, or advocates

An unstable, poisonous allotrope of oxygen.

Loud, noisy, and lacking in restraint or discipline


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