"My Superpowers"

Dan Greenburg's personal narrative "My Superpowers" describes an incident, response, and reflection on wishing for and discovering superpowers.

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 6 Unit 1's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: Imperfect Me, My Superpowers, Flipped, The Jacket, Kira-Kira, Thank You, M'am, Pandora and the Whispering Box, Eleven, The Treasure of Lemon Brown, The Fun They Had
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. bound
    a light, self-propelled movement upwards or forwards
    Like Superman, I wanted to be able to fly faster than speeding bullets, to be more powerful than locomotives, to leap tall buildings at a single bound.
  2. terrorize
    frighten greatly
    On the coldest days of winter, three bullies waited for me after school, just for the fun of terrorizing me.
  3. tease
    annoy persistently
    Vernon and his two buddies would pull off my Cubs cap and tease me with it.
  4. humiliate
    cause to feel shame
    As if it wasn't bad enough that these guys humiliated me when I was alone, now they were doing it in front of Ann Cohn.
  5. embarrassed
    made to feel uncomfortable because of shame or wounded pride
    I was so embarrassed, I began to cry.
  6. flail
    beat hard or give a thrashing to
    Encouraged by their backing away, I ran after them, screaming, punching, flailing at them with both fists.
  7. triumph
    a successful ending of a struggle or contest
    That weekend, perhaps made braver by my triumph over the three bullies, I kissed Ann Cohn on her sofa.
  8. brag
    show off
    In any case, I could now brag that, at age eight, I had personally kissed an actual girl who wasn't related to me.
  9. particular
    unique or specific to a person or thing or category
    I discovered a particular pleasure in going on risky adventures.
  10. homicide
    the killing of a human being by another human being
    I spent six months riding with New York homicide cops as they chased and captured drug dealers and murderers.
  11. stunt
    a difficult or unusual or dangerous feat
    I flew upside-down over the Pacific Ocean with a stunt pilot in an open-cockpit airplane.
  12. ceremony
    any activity performed in a solemn, elaborate, or formal way
    I took part in dangerous voodoo ceremonies in Haiti.
  13. stumble
    encounter by chance
    I began writing a series of children's books called The Zack Files, about a boy named Zack who keeps stumbling into the supernatural.
  14. temporary
    not permanent; not lasting
    In many of these books I gave Zack temporary powers--to read minds, to travel outside his body, to travel back into the past, to triumph over ghosts and monsters.
  15. maximum
    the greatest or most complete or best possible
    I created another series called Maximum Boy, about a boy named Max who accidentally touches radioactive rocks that just came back from outer space and who suddenly develops superpowers.
Created on Tue Aug 12 13:57:52 EDT 2014 (updated Wed Aug 13 09:38:59 EDT 2014)

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