STEP INTO THE GED
READING PRACTICE: Early America

RETURN TO H1: Early America
 

Respond to the items in the boxes provided. If you are not sure, check your answers with the reading after you complete them. (NOTE: To move from one line to another, use the tab key or click in the next line.)

1. Where did the first people in North America come from?  

 2. What was the ice mass that joined two continents called?
 

3. Give an example of a large animal that inhabited what is now North America.
 

4. What is the passage about?
 
 
 

5. Check the sentences that most likely state an opinion rather than a fact.

  1. Beringia was probably some 1,500 kilometers wide.
  2. Early humans crossed down through Alaska.
  3. Over time, more and more species of large game died out.
  4. They became the most skillful irrigation farmers the Southwest ever knew.
  5. Their hides were also useful to  early North Americans.

6. Check the sentence that best describes what the main idea (what the reading was about) of the passage. Think about what you answered in question number 4.

  1. The first North Americans crossed a land bridge to populate what is now the United States.
  2. Beringia was probably some 1,500 kilometers wide
  3. As  the mammoth began to die out, the bison took its place
  4. Plants, berries and seeds became important in the early American diet.

  

VOCABULARY

Fill in the blanks in the sentences with one of the following words. You may have to change the form of the word to fit the sentence. For example, you may say migrated instead of migrate to fit the time (tense) of the sentence.

emerge ~ primitive ~ vanish ~ principal  ~ evidence ~  glacier ~ migrate

1.  Cave paintings are a form of      art.

2.  Big animals, like the mammoth, have      .

3.  Fast foods have become a      part of the modern American diet.

4.  A vast ice bridge      between two continents between 34,000 and 30,000 BC.

5.  Many scientists say that our globe is getting warmer and that the great      are melting fast

6.  Many birds      to the south for the winter.

7.  There is a lot of      to support global warming.