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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 

THRESHOLD

DEFINITION:
A level, point, or value at which something is true.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
Child poverty — an assessment of whether pretax income for households with children falls below the latest poverty threshold — declined more significantly in New Mexico in the last three years, dropping from an estimated rate of 24.2% between 2022 and 2024 to 20.9% from 2023 to 2025.
►The Albuquerque Journal, 09/28/2026

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. Participle

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

► A form of a verb that in some languages, such as English, can function independently as an adjective.

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

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


2. Hieroglyphic

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

► 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.

► A rebirth or revival.

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


3. Plateau

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

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

► A disorderly commotion or disturbance.

► The quality or state of being tranquil; serenity.


4. 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

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

► To cringe in fear

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


5. Maneuver

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

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

► A movement or procedure involving skill and dexterity.

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


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