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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 

DISCERN

DEFINITION:
To see, recognize, or understand something that is not clear.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
As you can discern, we have a rather complex group of vehicle violations that need to be cured.
►The Las Vegas Review-Journal, 10/26/2026

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. Xylem

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

► The supporting and water-conducting tissue of vascular plants, consisting primarily of tracheids and vessels; woody tissue.

► Appropriateness of behavior or conduct

► The arrangement of events in time


2. Laconic

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

► Using or marked by the use of few words; terse or concise.

► A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image.

► Being without or almost without hope


3. Tundra

► Having no specific pattern, purpose, or objective.

► The act of reasoning from factual knowledge or evidence.

► A treeless area between the icecap and the tree line of Arctic regions, having a permanently frozen subsoil and supporting low-growing vegetation

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


4. Tempo

► A characteristic rate or rhythm of activity; a pace

► The repetition of the same sounds or of the same kinds of sounds at the beginning of words or in stressed syllables

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

► 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. Hologram

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

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

► A Y-shaped protein on the surface of B cells that is secreted into the blood or lymph in response to an antigenic stimulus

► Selecting or employing individual elements from a variety of sources, systems, or styles


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