"They Have Yarns"

The poet Carl Sandburg uses hyperbole to give a humorously vivid yet not quite believable picture of American life.

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 8 Unit 4's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: Made You Laugh, Brothers, Pet Peeves, Underfunded Schools Forced to Cut, The Open Window, A Day's Work, They Have Yarns, Mooses, Is Traffic Jam Delectable?, The Power of Pets, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Fear Busters
10 words 8 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. yarn
    tell or spin a tale
    They have yarns
  2. hinge
    a joint that holds two parts together so that one can swing
    Of a skyscraper so tall they had to put hinges
    On the two top stories so to let the moon go by
  3. root
    underground plant organ that lacks buds or leaves or nodes
    Of one corn crop in Missouri when the roots
    Went so deep and drew off so much water
    The Mississippi riverbed that year was dry
  4. straddle
    sit or stand astride of
    Of Pecos Pete straddling a cyclone in Texas and riding it to the west coast where "it rained out under him"
  5. swarm
    a group of many things in the air or on the ground
    Of the man who drove a swarm of bees across the Rocky Mountains and the Desert "and didn't lose a bee"
  6. caboose
    a car on a freight train for use of the train crew
    Of a mountain railroad curve where the engineer in his cab can touch the caboose and spit in the conductor's eye
  7. accurate
    characterized by perfect conformity to fact or truth
    Of the sheep counter who was fast and accurate: "I just count their feet and divide by four."
  8. cyclone
    an atmospheric system in which air circulates rapidly
    Of a cyclone that sucked cookstoves out of the kitchen, up the chimney flue, and on to the next town
  9. hollow
    remove the inner part or the core of
    Of the herd of cattle in California getting lost in a giant redwood tree that had hollowed out
  10. swallow
    engulf and destroy
    Of the man who killed a snake by putting its tail in its mouth so it swallowed itself
Created on Tue Sep 15 18:08:52 EDT 2015 (updated Wed Sep 16 02:23:33 EDT 2015)

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