2. Written by : E.L. Konigsburg Genre: Humorous fiction Skill: Predict The View from Saturday

3. WORDS TO KNOW: accustomed decline former presence unaccompanied

4. More Words to Know: corsages rabbi superstitious

5. accustomed usual, customary

6. decline process of losing power, strength, beauty, health, etc; growing worse

7. former earlier; past

8. presence condition of being present in a place

9. unaccompanied not accompanied; alone

10. corsages small bouquets of flowers, worn on the shoulder of a woman's clothes or on her wrist

11. rabbi teacher of the Jewish law and religion; leader of a Jewish congregation

12. Superstitious having belief or practice based on ignorant fear or mistaken reverence

13. The plot of a story is the events that happen in it. A plot includes (1) a problem or goal, (2) rising action, as a character tries to solve the problem or meet the goal, (3) a climax, when the character meets the problem or goal head-on, and (4) a resolution, or outcome. A writer may not tell the story in the order in which events occur. A writer may hint at the future through foreshadowing, or may go back in time through a flashback.

14. To predict means to tell what you think might happen in a selection based on what has already happened. Knowing plot events and comparing them to plots in other stories you have read can help you make predictions about the resolution, or ending, of a story.

15. Conventions are the ruse to make their meaning clear to readers. For rules for written language. They are the signals that writers example, sentences begin with a capital letter and end with punctuation. Paragraphs are often indented to show where a new idea begins. Grammar and spelling follow patterns