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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 

DEPLETE

DEFINITION:
To use up or consume a limited resource.

FOUND IN THE NEWS:
Councilor Brian Worrell is sounding off after a Suffolk Superior Court judge ruled that if the footage became public before trial, it would deplete the jury pool in the manslaughter case against Boston police officer Nick O’Malley.
The Boston Herald, 07/27/2026

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. Tundra

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

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

Of or relating to the range of invisible radiation wavelengths from about 4 nanometers, on the border of the x-ray region, to about 380 nanometers, just beyond the violet in the visible spectrum.

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


2. Light-Year

An unstable, poisonous allotrope of oxygen.

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

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

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


3. Phloem

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

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

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

A member of an irregular, usually indigenous military or paramilitary unit operating in small bands in occupied territory to harass and undermine the enemy


4. Boycott

To honor the memory of with a ceremony

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

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

A dense evergreen forest occupying a tropical region with an annual rainfall of at least 100 inches.


5. Renaissance

A rebirth or revival.

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

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

To cringe in fear


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