Reading & Literary Text
The overarching message, moral, or lesson about life that an author wants the reader to take away from a story.
Answer: What is theme?
Clue: Words or phrases in surrounding sentences that give hints to help a reader determine the meaning of an unfamiliar word.
Answer: What are context clues?
Clue: An author's primary reason for writing a text, categorized mainly as persuading, informing, or entertaining (P.I.E.).
Answer: What is author's purpose?
Clue: A first-hand account created by someone who experienced an event, such as a soldier's diary, a photograph, or the Mayflower Compact.
Answer: What is a primary source?
Clue: The primary environmental factor that determined how different American Indian tribes built homes, found food, and made clothing.
Answer: What is their geography? (or natural resources / environment)
Clue: The narrative perspective used when the narrator is a character in the story, using pronouns like I, me, my, and we.
Answer: What is first-person point of view?
Clue: The Latin root word found in geography, geology, and geometry that means "Earth".
Answer: What is geo?
Clue: Visual features like bold words, captions, sidebars, charts, and diagrams that help readers navigate non-fiction texts.
Answer: What are text features?
Clue: These horizontal lines on a globe measure distance north or south of the Equator and are also called parallels.
Answer: What are lines of latitude?
Clue: The three historical motivations for European exploration, commonly called the "Three G's."
Answer: What are God, Gold, and Glory?
Clue: The sequence of events in a story that includes the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.
Answer: What is the plot?
Clue: Adding this prefix—meaning "under" or "below"—to the base word marine creates a word that means a ship that operates underwater.
Answer: What is sub-? (creates submarine)
Clue: The text structure that presents events or steps in strict time or sequential order.
Answer: What is chronological order? (or sequential order)
Clue: The historic three-legged transatlantic trade route that exchanged manufactured goods, enslaved Africans, and raw materials (like sugar and tobacco) between Europe, West Africa, and the Americas.
Answer: What is the Triangular Trade?
Clue: The widespread transfer of plants, animals, culture, populations, and diseases between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres starting in 1492.
Answer: What is the Columbian Exchange?
Clue: The literary device being used in the sentence: "The lawn mower roared to life like an angry lion."
Answer: What is a simile?
Clue: A complete sentence must have a subject and a predicate that match in number, following this fundamental grammar rule.
Answer: What is subject-verb agreement?
Clue: The text organization style that shows how one event leads directly to another happening as a result.
Answer: What is cause and effect?
Clue: The English soldier and leader who helped the Jamestown colony survive its early struggles by declaring, "He that will not work shall not eat."
Answer: Who is Captain John Smith?
Clue: Established in Virginia in 1607, this was the first permanent English settlement in North America.
Answer: What is Jamestown?
Clue: Combining evidence explicitly stated in the text with your own background knowledge (schema) to draw a logical conclusion.
Answer: What is making an inference?
Clue: A well-known traditional phrase or saying that expresses a general truth or piece of advice, such as "actions speak louder than words."
Answer: What is an adage? (or proverb)
Clue: The central thought or key point that an informational paragraph or passage focuses on, supported by detail sentences.
Answer: What is the main idea? (or central idea)
Clue: The three major geographic regions of the 13 English Colonies, categorized by climate, soil, and industry.
Answer: What are the New England, Middle, and Southern Colonies?
Clue: The document written and signed by the Pilgrims in 1620 that established a framework for self-government in Plymouth Colony.
Answer: What is the Mayflower Compact?