Text Leveling System

Miss Alaineus

RDQ:	1320	Max Word/Sent	60	Total Words	2128		Diff Words	771
Lex	800	Ave Word/.Sent	12	Hi Freq occurs	1483	69.7%	Hi freq	319	41.4%
AR	4.1	Long Sentences	17.8	Low Freq occurs	177	8.3%	Low freq	143	18.5%

Extra! Extra! Extra credit for Mrs page's fifth grade students!
Open the dictionary to the a section and write a sentence using 3 words that begin with the letter . try to select words that are different, unusual, or surprising to you. When you have completed your a sentence, move on to the B section. Continue writing one sentence using 3 words from each letter until you complete the alphabet. I'd like your sentences to tell me something about your daily activities consider writing about what you are doing, thinking, or feeling. All twenty six sentences are due two weeks from today. Good luck and have fun!]]
None of this would have happened if it worked for forest. Forest is not a thicket of trees. Forest is a boy. A sick boy. A boy sneezing and coughing all over my desk and pencils. I caught forests cold and had to stay home from school on Tuesday. Tuesday is vocabulary day at Webster school. Followed my advice: never get sick on vocabulary day. I have a feeling this awesome ailment will cause me great agony soon.]]
On Tuesday afternoon I called my best friend, starr, who is not a luminous celestial object seen as a point of light in the sky, but a very smart girl who listens perfectly on vocabulary day. She was late for baseball practice, so she spelled the first fourteen vocabulary words as fast as she could.
I had to scribble them quickly because her mom was calling her to the car. The last ones miss Alaineus. Starr yelled. I gotta go. I hope you feel better tomorrow, sage. And she hung up the phone with a crash. What did I tell you? This Berserk bacteria has bulldozed me badly. Help!]]
Vocabulary words dinosaur snake museum reptile constrictor herpetologist fossil carnivore herbivore Nest species theory hypothesis category miss Alaineus
I didn't feel much better on Wednesday, so my mom called Mrs. page who is not a single side of a printed sheet of paper usually found bound in a book. She's my teacher, and actually Mrs. page is a good name for her because she reads to us every day. My mom told her yes, I had my math problems and vocabulary words, and yes, I would get better soon.
Every week Mrs. page gives us a list of words with a theme, like story writing or musical performance or electricity. We're supposed to look up each word in the dictionary, but sometimes I already know the words , so I tried to make the definition sound like I looked them up. I croak when I cough, and I call this a terrible catastrophe.]]
Tree: a large leafy plant with a tall wooden trunk that pushes roots into the ground and branches into the sky
Automobile: the vehicle used to transport humans, usually consisting of four wheels, a steering wheel, and a radio
I thought I was pretty good at definitions until this week. My mom says, pride goeth before a fall. Pride an unduly high opinion of oneself. Goeth: old English for to go. Fall: what happened on Monday, vocabulary test day. I am defective and delirious , and soon I will dwindle away.]]
By Thursday afternoon my head felt like it was stuffed with cotton and my throat felt swollen shut. I finished defining my vocabulary words while propped up in bed with a box of tissues on one side and a gigantic red dictionary on the other. It's hard to look up words in a huge book while you're in bed blowing your nose, so I made my own dictionary language for as many of them as I could. Hypothesis: what you guess will happen in your science experiment. Category: a bunch of things that are alike. miss Alaineus:
Can I endure this extraordinary redness in my eyeballs?]]
The burning fever makes my future look dim and fuzzy.]]
You should know that for years I had wondered who miss Alaineus was. When I was little I figured out that she had something to do with the kitchen, because the miss Alaineus drawer held the spoons too big to fit anywhere else, this sharp corn holders shaped like tiny cobs, and the spaghetti spork that weird cross between a spoon and a fork that perfectly lifts slippery spaghetti out of a bowl. I thought maybe she was an ancestor: an ancient relative long dead, who left us all these odd things in the drawer. Then just last year my mom and I were at the grocery store and it all fell into place. We were in one of those very big hurries when she said you go get some of that long Italian bread and two sticks of butter. I'll get miss Alaineus things and meet you here at the cash register.
I found the bread and butter, and my mom came back with spaghetti sauce, a can of parmesan cheese, a can of corn, and a big green box of spaghetti with a beautiful woman on the front. She was drawn so that her hair tumbled perfectly across the box and ended in a little plastic window, making the spaghetti look just like the ends of the strands of her hair. There she was miss Alaineus.
Can't you hear my gloomy groans and gruesome wails?]]
Won't this heap of homework make my headache worse?]]
So propped up on my pillow in my bed, with the tissue in one hand and a pencil in the other, I wrote: miss Alaineus: the woman on green spaghetti boxes whose hair is the color of uncooked pasta and turns into spaghetti at the ends. And then I fell asleep. If I don't improve soon, insanity is inevitable.]]
My bed is just a jumbo jumble of germy sheets.]]
I finally got better over the weekend and felt great on Monday. I turned in my homework to Mrs page and sat down at my desk, glad to be back at school with my friends. I was even glad to see forest at our morning circle meeting. First, I want to remind you of the 10th annual vocabulary parade on Friday, said Mrs. page. I hope you are all working on your word costumes. Second, Please remember to bring your bus money and permission slips for our Science Museum field trip tomorrow. And third, instead of our usual Monday test, we're going to have a vocabulary Bee today.
Everyone line up here by the chalkboard and I'll choose
did this ailment kick my years of knowledge back to kindergarten?]]
A word from our list. After I pronounce the word, please spell and define it. If you are correct, go to the end of the line. If you miss the word, please sit down at your desk and look it up in the dictionary Write the word five times and define it once.
Starr was first with museum: M U s e u m: a building for exhibiting objects about art or history or science, she said and went to the back of the line.
Cliff, not a high steep face of rock, but one very tall boy, answered to the word dinosaur: d I n o s a u r a prehistoric extinct reptile often huge, and he went to the back of the line.
Is it  likely a bit of learning was lost each time I blew my nose?]]
I was 10th, and when Mrs. page called out my word, I spelled: capital m I s s, capital a l a I n e u s. And added, the woman on green spaghetti boxes whose hair is the color of uncooked pasta and turns into spaghetti at the ends.
There was a moment of silence in the room. I smiled at Mrs. page. She waited to see if I would add anything else, and when I didn't, she grinned. Not smiled grinned: to draw back the lips and bear the teeth, as in a very wide smile add the entire class burst into one huge giggling, laughing, falling down mass of kids. Forest was doubled over. Starr, my best friend, was laughing so hard tears came to her eyes. By now, even Mrs. page was laughing.
Pride goeth before a fall. I was sage: one who shows wisdom, experience, judgment. Why were they laughing? Wise girl with words my dad always called me. What had I said? I was beginning to turn red. Red: the color of embarrassment.
Did I mention that my moaning mournful days are over?]]
Did you see that my turn is near and I'm not even nervous?]]
Finally the room quieted. Mrs. page opened her dictionary and wrote on the chalkboard:
Miscellaneous: consisting of various kinds or qualities a collection of unrelated objects.
My jaw dropped as I looked at the spelling. My eyes bulged as I read the definition. I didn't bother to tell anyone about my mom and the spaghetti spork and the grocery store. Humbled: aware of my shortcomings, modest, meek, I dragged back to my seat and wrote miscellaneous five times and defined it once. And that's when I remembered I had even drawn a picture of the spaghetti box for extra credit. I was devastated: wasted, ravaged. Ruined: destroyed. Finished: brought to an end.
They called me miss Alaineus for the rest of the day. Sometimes a person couldn't even get the words out before bending over with laughter. The day took a week to end. When I got off the bus I slumped home devastated, ruined, finished.
Obliterate me, send me to oblivion  no one could outdo my stupidity.]]
Is positively the most painful day of my short, pathetic life.]]
I told my mom the whole story, from the kitchen drawer to the grocery store to the vocabulary bee. Even my own mother laughed a little at the part about the drawing for extra credit, but at least she stopped fast and said, you know what I always say there's gold in every mistake. Gold? A bright yellow precious metal of great value? Mistake? Something done, said, or thought in the wrong way? Impossible I told her. Impossible: not capable of happening.
I couldn't believe I ever had to go back to school. But the next day we went to the Science Museum, and everyone forgot all about miss Alaineus at the snake exhibit and the dinosaur bone lab. Then the guide said, the field of bone archaeology has been influenced by a wide and unusual array of miscellaneous discoveries around the world. The class burst out laughing, and the guide was pleased with herself for entertaining us so easily. And I knew: to apprehend with certainty, that my mistake was still alive and well and nothing like gold.
With one quiet question my life sank into quicksand.]]
On this ruined, rotten day, it rains in my heart.]]
After school I lay on my bed and stared at the wall. How could I have been so stupid? My mom came in and said it was time to work on my costume for the vocabulary parade. We had finished the cap for capable but I still needed to make the letters down the back.
Mom, I said, I could only be a mistake this year. Miss stake.
Will I feel better someday, somewhere, somehow?]]
Suddenly I sat up. I looked at my mom. She looked at me. I smiled. She smiled. Sweetheart, she said, let's take another look at that cap.
Tell me this terrible twist of fate will end soon.]]
It took the most courage I've ever had to walk out on the stage as miss Alaineus. Queen of all miscellaneous things. But when Mr. bell read my word and definition, everyone applauded and laughed wildly: in a matter lacking all restraint, and I grinned at my mom across the auditorium.
Undaunted, I undertook those unforgettable steps onto the stage.]]
Forest came right after me. When he bowed, his precipitation watering can hat rained on Mr. Bell's new suit, and the entire audience gasped, then cheered when Mr. bell smiled at his soggy clothes.
The stage was vast, I felt valiant, and no one threw a vegetable.]]
To my astonishment: great shock and amazement , I won a gold trophy for the most original use of a word in the 10th annual vocabulary parade. So this time mom was right. There was gold in this mistake. And next year I'm going to be.
We waved and whistled and wished it would never end.]]
If X happy, then we were all X * 10 and chiming like xylophones.]]
Over Yonder you'll see me jump and yell with Glee. Miss Sterious investigator of all things mysterious.
I'll zip my backpack and zoom with zest right out of here.]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: Little support

Vocabulary: Some difficult words

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Some Long/Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Features

Clear cause/effect

First Person

Unusual use of vocabulary

Topic

Feelings/Emotions

Teasing

Words

Mistakes

*Feelings, Behaviors

*Schools & Education

Low Frequency Words

activities	advice	agony	ailment	alaineus
amazement	ancestor	annual	applauded	apprehend
archaeology	array	astonishment	audience	auditorium
bacteria	berserk	bulged	bulldozed	carnivore
catastrophe	category	celestial	certainty	chalkboard
constrictor	cough	coughing	courage	defective
defined	defining	definitions	delirious	devastated
doubled	drawer	drawn	dwindle	electricity
embarrassment	entertaining	exhibit	exhibiting	extinct
extraordinary	fossil	future	germy	gigantic
giggling	glee	goeth	gotta	grocery
gruesome	guide	headache	herbivore	holders
humbled	hurries	hypothesis	improve	inevitable
influenced	insanity	investigator	judgment	jumble
jumbo	kindergarten	knowledge	lacking	language
laughter	likely	listens	luminous	mention
miscellaneous	modest	mournful	musical	mysterious
object	objects	obliterate	oblivion	oneself
opinion	original	parmesan	pathetic	performance
permission	positively	precious	precipitation	prehistoric
propped	qualities	quicksand	quieted	ravaged
redness	register	relative	restraint	sage
sauce	science	section	select	shortcomings
spork	sterious	strands	stupidity	sweetheart
swollen	theme	theory	thicket	tissue
tissues	transport	trophy	uncooked	undaunted
undertook	unduly	unforgettable	unrelated	valiant
various	vocabulary	webster	weird	whistled
wisdom	xylophones	yonder