Land and Life in the Ancient World

Tests, tests, tests.  Middle school is filled with them. Luckily, there are a few ways that you can improve your reading skills, and this will lead to better success on tests and assessments.  One key is to focus on vocabulary when reading a text.  Understanding the terms or phrases in primary and secondary sources is important for understanding the key messages of the source.  Test questions are often based on your understanding of the central idea of a source, or specific vocabulary within passages from the source.

In this activity, you will learn how to use context clues to identify the meaning of vocabulary that you find in sources in history. Context clues are words or phrases in a text that give a hint about the meaning of an unknown word. Understanding ways to figure out the meaning of these words will help you better understand the central idea of the text, and will also help when you see these terms again in other sources.

Module Objectives

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text to identify the characteristics and interactions of ancient civilizations.