Excerpt from "Kaffir Boy"

Has your mother ever had to drag you off to school? If so, compare your experience to that of Mark Mathabane in his autobiography about growing up in South Africa.

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 10 Unit 2's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: Where I'm From, Funny in Farsi, Kaffir Boy, Pick One, If You Are What You Eat, Persepolis, poems about parents, Hunger of Memory, Thanksgiving: A Personal History, Time to Assert American Values, Rough Justice, On Civil Disobedience, On Surrender at Bear Paw Mountain, On Women's Right to Vote, Declaration of the Rights of the Child, School's Out for Summer, One Word of Truth, Hope, Despair, and Memory
10 words 54 learners

Learn words with Flashcards and other activities

Definition First
Print Flashcards

Other learning activities

Answer a few questions about each word. Use this to prep for your next quiz! Compete with other teams in real time to see who answers the most questions correctly! Test your spelling acumen. Read the definition, listen to the word and try spelling it!

Teaching tools

Create and assign quizzes to your students to test their vocabulary. Assign learning activities including Practice, Vocabulary Jams and Spelling Bees to your students, and monitor their progress in real-time.

Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. revere
    regard with feelings of respect
    My philosophy on school was that of a gang of ten-eleven-and twelve-year-olds whom I so revered that their every word seemed that of an oracle.
  2. captivate
    attract; cause to be enamored
    One thing she did not know was that the gang's way of life had captivated me wholly, particularly their philosophy on school: they hated it and considered an education a waste of time.
  3. balk
    refuse to proceed or comply
    "What!" I balked, upon hearing the word washtub.
  4. purge
    rinse, clean, or empty with a liquid
    My mother, armed with a scropbrush and a piece of Lifebouy soap, purged me of years and years of grime till I ached and bled.
  5. insist
    be emphatic or resolute and refuse to budge
    "Put it on," my mother insisted.
  6. intricate
    having many complexly arranged elements; elaborate
    She folded the shirt in so many intricate ways and stashed it inside the pants, they too having been folded several times at the waist.
  7. lavish
    given or giving freely, generously, or without restriction
    She then lavishly smeared my face, arms and legs with a mixture of pig's fat and Vaseline.
  8. lunge
    make a thrusting forward movement
    As I leaped for the windowsill, my mother lunged at me and brought me down.
  9. matriarch
    a female head of a family or tribe
    I bit and clawed every hand that grabbed me, and howled protestations against going to school; however, I was no match for the two determined matriarchs.
  10. bound
    confined by bonds
    In a jiffy they had me bound, hand and feet.
Created on Fri Oct 10 15:08:10 EDT 2014 (updated Mon Oct 13 15:08:36 EDT 2014)

Sign up now (it’s free!)

Whether you’re a teacher or a learner, Vocabulary.com can put you or your class on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.