1-page, Section-by-Section Vocabulary Printables

The Professor’s one-word exclamation names the whole method he then models, and the word is doing real work in a book of talking beasts: it is the adult’s test applied to a child’s impossible story.

Edmund’s look is the betrayal in miniature, and 'superior' is the exact word for the posture; students meet a familiar sibling gesture given a precise name.

A plain narrative verb students half-know, anchored to the moment the four take up their journey again after the silence; the excerpt shows resuming as picking up something interrupted.

The Professor’s conclusion turns on it, and the excerpt supplies the reasoning that defines it: not knowing, but proceeding on the best available evidence.

Lifted from a courteous, formal register the children are not used to being addressed in; the doubling — 'very careful consideration' — makes the weight of the word audible.

Lucy’s alarm at Tumnus’s tears is the section’s first real emotional pitch, and the piled questions in the excerpt show distress rather than merely naming it.

A quiet ranking word that students often read past; here the excerpt makes its job visible — Susan has more than one motive, and this was the main one.

Worth quizzing precisely because the excerpt’s sense (an insult) sits against the book’s other, literal sense; Lucy’s outburst forces the reader to choose.

The Witch’s face is the reader’s first sight of her, and 'stern' is the cold, judging hardness that the surrounding beauty only makes stranger.

The word carries the danger Edmund cannot see: the excerpt pairs the Queen’s questioning with his greed, so 'inquisitive' arrives already shaded toward interrogation.

spite: Strong word and strong moment, but it draws on the same passage the set already quizzes; it falls just short on that account rather than on merit.

regard: A genuinely useful formal sense of 'regard' — to consider as — but the Professor’s exchange is already well represented in the set.

charge: The legal sense of an accusation, well set up by the Professor’s gravity; it loses out only to a crowded stretch of the section.

let Lucy down: A transparent idiom whose meaning students can nearly infer, drawn from a passage the set already uses.

lost their heads: Vivid idiom, but the excerpt’s string of alternative explanations makes the phrase harder to isolate than the top ten.

harness: Concrete and easily pictured; more a scene-setting noun than a comprehension hinge.

curious: The excerpt uses the 'strange' sense well, but the word is familiar enough at this grade to be low-yield as a quiz item.

drifted: Physically clear and quickly grasped from context; strong helper material rather than a quiz item.

lulling: A fine word in a fine sentence, but it sits inside a long hypothetical that takes real work to unpack.

heartily: Pleasant and inferable from the handshake that follows; the least demanding of the twenty.

The verb carries the whole of Edmund's betrayal in one flat, businesslike word: he 'proceeded to tell her all he had heard.' A common formal verb doing quiet, damning work, set against the Witch's cruel smile.

A concrete instance of the abstract noun students meet constantly in argument writing: the Witch's 'claim to be Queen' is an assertion of right, not a possession. The sentence makes that sense unmistakable.

Edmund's self-deception turns on this word, and the narrator immediately labels it an excuse. Strong for the -ful morphology and for the section's theme of legitimate versus usurped rule.

The section's pivotal act named at the moment it is recognized. Mr. Beaver's flat 'He has betrayed us all' gives the word its full weight of broken trust.

Precise and often misread as 'sad' or 'gloomy.' Lewis defines it by contrast in the excerpt itself, with the children 'very glad, but also solemn,' teaching gravity without sorrow.

A vivid physical sense of a word students otherwise meet as 'bare' meaning empty; the Wolf's 'bared teeth' shows the verb sense of uncovering and exposing, in a high-tension excerpt.

The book's central image, working as both literal melting and the end of the Witch's tyranny. The dwarf's denial, 'This is no thaw ... This is Spring,' sharpens the meaning by rejecting it.

Applied to a stone lion's face rather than a person, the word shows its sense of dignified grandeur rather than high birth. Pairing with 'terrible' and 'sad' gives students rich context.

'A great grim slab of gray stone' anchors the adjective's forbidding, joyless sense to a concrete object students will remember from the section's darkest turn.

The everyday sense students know is 'inquisitive'; here it means strange or remarkable. A clean sense-distinction placed at the moment Aslan is first named.

beast: Peter's 'rather a little beast' is the insult sense rather than the animal one, a genuine sense-shift worth teaching. It fell just short only because the set already draws a quiz word from this same conversation.

stammered: A precise dialogue verb showing Edmund's fear before the Witch. Just short of the top ten because the set already quizzes a nearby moment from this same audience with her.

schemes: Plans with a whiff of scheming: the Witch's 'schemes' going 'badly wrong.' A useful word with a clear excerpt, edged out by stronger candidates.

plunging: The forceful thrust sense of 'plunge,' vivid in Peter's sword stroke. Close, but the Wolf fight already supplies a top-ten word.

courtyard: Concrete and easily inferred from its surroundings, which limits what a quiz can teach. The excerpt is strong but the word is likely already known at this grade.

traitors: Thematically central and a natural pair with 'betray,' but the two overlap closely enough in meaning that quizzing both would be redundant.

restore: Father Christmas's cordial that will 'restore' the wounded is a clear instance of the bring-back-to-health sense. A solid candidate that simply ranked below richer words.

stroke: The blow sense of a familiar noun, clear in context but narrow in what it teaches. Just inside the close calls.

shuddered: A vivid physical reaction carrying Mr. Beaver's dread of the Witch's statues. Fell short mainly because the section offers several stronger emotion verbs.

bristling: Precise and visual, with the hair rising along the Wolf's back. Ranked last of the twenty because the excerpt trails off before the word does much work.

The epithet turns on a sense students rarely meet — 'just' as fair in judgment rather than the everyday adverb — and the coronation line makes the shift explicit by setting it beside 'council and judgment'.

A feeling word whose excerpt conveys intensity through restraint: the girls had wanted this since the moment they first saw him. Sits a few lines from 'bitterly' in the same walk to the Stone Table; the two images are distinct enough to keep both.

The Deep Magic parley turns on this word, and the exchange defines it by opposition — an offense is committed against someone, and here the question is against whom.

Central to the section's legal logic, and the excerpt shows the claim being renounced, which makes an asserted right visible at the moment it is given up.

The key word of the sacrifice: that Aslan made no resistance at all is the whole meaning of what he does, and the Hags' shriek of triumph clarifies it by contrast.

An intensity adverb attached to grief rather than to taste, and the parenthetical 'though they hardly knew why' hands students the emotional frame. Shares the Stone Table walk with 'longed' — seen and accepted, since each excerpt carries its own image.

A high-utility hedging adverb, and the excerpt models the 'as it seems, though not certain' sense through a route the children only half-recognize.

A verb sense well away from the familiar noun, and 'advising Peter how to conduct the operations' plus the tactical quotation pins it firmly to directing.

A common phrasal verb whose sense of caring for someone is set off cleanly against 'restored' in the same sentence.

A concrete architectural sense students will otherwise read as 'a passage of text', and the Macready scene makes the hallway unmistakable.

restored: A strong word with a clear sense, but it shares its single sentence with 'attending to', so its excerpt would reach the reader already read.

proceeded: Serviceable and clear, though the camp-pitching sentence gives the word little to work against; it teaches the meaning without a memorable moment.

principal: A genuine homophone trap worth teaching, but the coronation-hunt sentence reads more as a list than as a scene.

prophecy: Important to the plot and well defined by the Witch's own arithmetic, yet it falls just outside a top 10 already carrying the section's harder senses.

despair: Vivid in the Witch's mouth, but the imperative 'despair and die' makes the word more atmosphere than definable action.

press: The urging sense is real and useful; the famous 'not a tame lion' exchange is so quotable that the target word risks disappearing behind it.

at their ease: A neat idiom shown by contrast with everyone else's sudden chill, though it sits close to the 'offense' excerpt in the same parley.

pact: Short and clear, but the sentence leans on 'appeased' and 'Deep Magic' to carry weight the target word itself does not.

in charge of: A useful idiom with a slightly unexpected sense — Edmund is in Mrs. Beaver's care, not commanding her — but the excerpt's shock detail pulls attention away from it.

term: The school-year sense is worth catching, yet it arrives inside a long, clause-heavy sentence at the very edge of the top 20.