Excerpt from "Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes"

The excerpt focuses on a young girl named Cindy who is a terrible baseball player. To see how this story belongs with the main characters and themes of Chris Crutcher's "Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes," compare this list to the novel.

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 7 Unit 1's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: The Road Not Taken, Choices, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, Dust Tracks on a Road, Bad Boy, Why Couldn't I Have Been Named Ashley?, Phaethon, Daedalus and Icarus, Arachne, The Lion, the Fox, and the Stag, A Note from the Author, creation myths
10 words 19 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. exaggerate
    enlarge beyond bounds or the truth
    I hadn't slept a wink the night before and spent the entire day throwing my baseball against the side of the garage, grossly exaggerating the speed of the grounders
  2. merciless
    lacking pity, compassion, or forgiveness
    dribbling back as I snapped them into the merciless trap of my glove and threw the runner out
  3. memorize
    learn by heart
    When coach called us into a huddle before the umpire yelled, "Batter up!" he went over our positions and the batting order one last time, but he didn't need to for my sake because I had memorized those things from the first practice.
  4. uniform
    clothing of distinctive design worn by members of a group
    But I didn't care, because I had a new glove and a green-and-gold uniform and I belonged.
  5. huddle
    a quick private conference
    We were the home team and batted the bottom half of the inning, so we touched our gloves together in the middle of the huddle and yelled, "Go Oilers!"
  6. disappear
    become invisible or unnoticeable
    I walked so far back I almost disappeared into the playground swings beyond the field.
  7. spoil
    make a mess of, destroy or ruin
    Just that quick I didn't belong, and I remember thinking something always has to spoil it.
  8. embarrassed
    made to feel uncomfortable because of shame or wounded pride
    I was hurt and embarrassed and I wanted to go back to being invisible me again, but I couldn't because I had on the green shirt and cap, and all of a sudden that uniform was my enemy.
  9. miserable
    very unhappy
    Every game after that was miserable.
  10. dusty
    covered with a layer of fine powdery material
    But each time I walked down that hot, dusty summer road toward the playing field, I knew he might, that I didn't really belong because they could take my glove.
Created on Thu Aug 21 15:12:01 EDT 2014 (updated Fri Aug 22 22:46:29 EDT 2014)

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