The Veldt (1950)

By: Ray Bradbury

Vocabulary: Please write the definitions for the following words, then choose three words to put into a sentence.

• nursery – a nursery school or day nursery
• dimensional – magnitude; size:
• veldt – the open country, bearing grass, bushes, or shrubs, or thinly forested, characteristic of parts of southern Africa.
• absurdly – utterly or obviously senseless, illogical,
• vulture – any of several large, primarily carrion-eating Old World birds of prey
• tantrum – get angry: scream and yell
• illusion – something that deceives by producing a false or misleading impression of reality.
• neurotic – a person who tends to be emotionally unstable or unusually anxious
• binoculars – a special device to see very far away
• intersperse – to scatter here and there or place at intervals among other things:
• appalled – to fill or overcome with horror,

Sentence #1: I saw the vulture circling in the sky.

Sentence #2: The children played games in the nursery.

Sentence #3:The little boy had  a tantrum in the toy store.

The Sea Devil

By: Arthur Gordon

Vocabulary:  Please write the definitions for the following words, then select three words to put into a sentence.

• lagoon – an area of shallow water separated from the sea by low sandy dunes.

Compare laguna.

• mullet – any of several marine or freshwater, usually gray fishes of the family Mugilidae, having a nearly cylindrical body.
• skiff – any of various types of boats small enough for sailing or rowing by one person.

pliant – bending readily; flexible; supple; adaptable:

She manipulated the pliant clay.

• gunwale – the upper edge of the side or bulwark of a vessel
• mottled – spots or blotches of a different color or shade.
• pinioned – the distal or terminal segment of the wing of a bird consisting of the carpus, metacarpus, and phalanges.
• barnacles – are sticky little crustaceans related to crabs, lobsters, and shrimps.
• channel – a navigable route between two bodies of water.
• sullen – gloomy or dismal, as weather or a sound

Sentence #1: The rock had lots of barnacles growing on it.

Sentence #2: The tree branch was very pliant when the wind was blowing.

Sentence #3: The boy’s face was mottled by measles.

A Mountain Journey

By: Howard O’Hagan

Vocabulary: Please write the definitions for the following words, then choose three words to put into a sentence.

• trapper – a person whose business is the trapping of animals for their furs.
• siwashing – to camp out without a tent or supplies.
• summit – the highest point or part, as of a hill, a line of travel, or any object; top; apex.

billows – any surging mass: billows of smoke.

bannock –a flat cake made of oatmeal, barley meal, etc., usually baked on a griddle.

• cadaverous – of or like a corpse.
• inertia – inertness, especially with regard to effort, motion, action, and the like; inactivity; sluggishness.

Sentence #1:The smoke billows across the sky.

Sentence #2: I have not gone to the summit.

Sentence #3: I ate bannock with my dinner.

The Friday Everything Changed

By: Anne Hart

Vocabulary:  Please write the definitions for the following words, then choose three words to put into a sentence.

• pump – a thing for raising or compressing air or gas in an object
• remotest –out of the way secluded a remote village a remote mountaintop
• bombshell – a bomb
• clustered – a number of things of the same kind growing or held together a bunch a cluster of grapes
• pasture – also called grassland
• inspector – a person who looks at things to make sure there are no problems Sentence #2: The cows eat the grass in the pasture.
• Sentence #3: The inspector the check house for any ants.
• Sentence #1: I pump the wheels.

Meg’s First Day

By: Deborah Kent

Vocabulary: Please write the definitions for the following words, then choose three words to put into a sentence.

• hubbub – a loud, confused noise, as of many voices
• sympathy – harmony of or agreement in feeling, as between persons or on the part of one person with respect to another.
• conspicuous – easily seen or noticed; readily visible or observable:
• jostling – to bump, push, shove, brush against, or elbow roughly or rudely.
• independence – freedom from the control, influence, support, aid, or the like, of others.
• maneuver – a planned and regulated movement or evolution of troops, warships, etc.
• succotash – a cooked dish of kernels of corn mixed with shell beans, especially lima beans, and, often, with green and sweet red peppers.