Level 2

Not all reading is the same.

Mara watched the bus pull away from the stop, its red lights shrinking into the dark.

Dev kept the spare key under the third flowerpot, the cracked one, because no one would think to look there.

Printing did not begin with Johannes Gutenberg.

The Great Wall is not one wall built by one ruler.

Orville and Wilbur Wright were two brothers in the United States who ran a shop that built and repaired bicycles.

Compound interest means earning interest on both the money you save and the interest already added.

Sellers choose prices, but supply and demand influence what buyers will pay.

At many coasts, the sea rises and falls twice during a tidal day.

Animals must find food to get energy, but green plants make their own.

The water in a puddle today may have floated in a cloud last week and rushed down a river last year.

While the city sleeps, Priya is already at work.

The train would take nine hours to cross the country, and Elena was glad of it.

Sleep supports the body and brain.

Life brings surprises, and many of them cost money.

North American river otters often appear playful.

After water, tea is the most common drink in the world.

Many phones, cars, and pieces of furniture sell for less once they are used.

A desert can go months, even years, without rain.

For many jobs today, the office is wherever a laptop opens.

Fly across many time zones, and your body arrives before your inner clock does.

Some kitchen leftovers, such as apple cores, coffee grounds, and potato peels, can become useful compost instead of going into the trash.

On Saturday mornings, the town square fills with tables of food.

After a long time at a desk, some people feel stiff or uncomfortable, especially when they sit hunched forward.

In northern autumn, many migrating geese travel south in flocks.

Nadia opened the bicycle shop at eight, though few people came before noon.

For eleven years Ines lived on the top floor and never went up to the roof.

The last train leaves at 12:40, and the platform is never crowded.

Imagine a farmer who wants shoes and offers eggs in exchange.

In 1799, French soldiers were digging near a town in Egypt.

Before 1840, sending a letter in Britain was awkward work.

A learner studies a new word list for two hours on one night.

After a day of learning, the brain remains active during sleep.

Teodor has run the bakery on Sedge Street for nineteen years.

Ndidi signed up for swimming lessons at forty-one.

Hugo took the wrong suitcase from the airport belt.

Drop a stone into water and it sinks.

Lightning produces both a flash and thunder.

The Arctic tern is a small seabird with one of the longest known migrations.

The saguaro is the tall cactus of the Sonoran Desert, in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico.

Beavers can change a stream by building a dam from branches, mud and stones.

Wangari Maathai grew up in rural Kenya and later studied biology in the United States.

Katsushika Hokusai was born in Japan in 1760.

In the early 1800s, Cherokee people spoke a language that did not yet have a widely used writing system.

When my kettle stopped working, I assumed I would need a new one.

When I started baking bread, I wanted the dough to rise as quickly as possible.

At the public library near my home, I can sit down without buying anything.

Turn a tap and water may arrive almost at once.

Water taken from a reservoir may need treatment before it is safe to drink.

Password advice has changed.

At a crowded party, you may follow one voice while other conversations become background noise.

In 1948, Marie Tharp took a job at a laboratory in New York that studied the ocean floor.

In the late 1860s, many machine-made paper bags were shaped like envelopes.

In 1941, a Swiss engineer named George de Mestral came home from hunting with his trousers covered in burrs, the prickly seed cases of the burdock plant.

A phone can detect a fingertip through a layer of glass.

A microwave oven does not heat every material in the same way.

In a market town there lived a miller who sold flour by weight.

Two farmers, Brek and Tomas, kept orchards on the same slope.

A young cook named Pia worked in a harbor kitchen beside an old cook named Ruth.

In the 1930s, Oklahoma grocer Sylvan Goldman noticed that customers struggled with heavy shopping baskets.

Before convenient matches, starting a household fire could take time and effort.

Across the Inca Empire, administrators kept records on objects called quipu.

Some auctions begin with a low price and invite people to bid upward.

A digital picture can contain millions of color values.

Dip one corner of a paper towel into colored water, and the wet patch slowly rises.

Imagine a person blind from birth but able to recognize a cube and a sphere by touch.

The Namib Desert receives little rain, but fog sometimes drifts inland from the Atlantic Ocean.

Writing notes by hand is slower than typing for many people.

When repairs closed her usual station, Priya left the tram three stops early.

Katherine Johnson joined the organization that became NASA as a mathematician.

Imagine stopping halfway through a letter.

A library call number is an address for a book.

A crab drew a line in the sand beside its burrow.

The Inca road system crossed deserts, valleys, and high Andes mountains.

A bank may advertise an account with no switching fee.

A file can change while it is stored or sent.

Pluck a stretched string, and it vibrates back and forth.

Imagine someone inside a closed room who does not understand Chinese.

Elephants produce many sounds, including low rumbles.

A fine cup remains wrapped in a cupboard because its owner is saving it for guests.

Every Thursday, Hana placed her bag on the covered bench beside the fountain.

Physician and researcher Charles Drew studied how blood could be collected, processed, and stored for transfusion.

After reading a short lesson, a student can reread it or close the page and try to recall the main points.

A community fridge is a shared refrigerator placed where people can reach it.

A young weaverbird watched an elder fasten grass around a branch.

The Achaemenid Persian Empire covered a vast territory.

Before anyone arrives at a community pottery room, the group must pay for rent, tables, shelves, and a kiln.

A heavy public door may swing open easily and then close without slamming.

At a paper-repair table, a thin paste can join torn fibers without hiding the page under thick glue.

A trail is often treated as an invitation: the ground is open, so anyone may pass.

Moss does not know which way is north.

I used to treat every puddle as an interruption in a walk.

Eren marked a straight path through the community garden with string.

Louis Braille was born in France in 1809.

Reading a set of instructions can make an idea feel familiar.

When one work shift ends, unfinished tasks do not disappear.

A finch planned to nest in the lowest fork of an orchard tree.

For centuries, sailors could estimate how far north or south they were by watching the Sun and stars.

A hiker reaches a rest stop with no water left.

Jonas tested two lamps for growing herbs indoors.

Two handheld radios can lose contact when a hill stands between them.

Imagine that Niko paints a blue circle on a gate and decides it means meet here at noon.

King penguins gather in large, noisy colonies on subantarctic islands.

The most useful part of our kitchen counter is the part we try to fill.

Only one tile in the repair box was purple.

Bartolomeo Cristofori cared for keyboard instruments at the Medici court in Florence near the end of the seventeenth century.

Tap the same three-beat pattern several times: long, short, short; long, short, short.

A sound check is a planned test before a performance, not a shortened concert.

Each night, three fireflies guided small animals across a reed bed.

Before electric wires carried news, France built chains of signal towers.

A grocery store could lower the price of soup for everyone.

A three-dimensional printer begins with a digital model.

After rain reaches dry ground, the air may carry an earthy smell called petrichor.

A person often helps someone nearby before helping a stranger far away.

An American pika is a small relative of rabbits that lives among cool, rocky slopes.

A useful gift can seem less exciting than a surprising one.

Nico's new apartment faced a narrow street.

Chien-Shiung Wu was born in China in 1912.

A painter looks up and discovers that two hours have passed.

During a theater performance, actors speak the lines, but a stage manager coordinates the event.

A snail envied the butterflies above the garden.

In the 1960s, a new dam on the Nile threatened the ancient temples at Abu Simbel in Egypt.

Suppose a toaster comes with a one-year warranty from its seller.

An infrared television remote sends messages using light that our eyes cannot see.

A snow crystal can begin when water vapor forms ice around a tiny particle in a cloud.

We cannot enter another creature's mind.

Some pitcher plants grow where soil provides little usable nitrogen.

An expert crosses a building without noticing its missing signs.

Mei folded a paper crane while riding to her first day at a new school.

Augusta Savage shaped clay as a child in Florida, despite a father who first opposed her art.

A class must sort five hundred donated books.

On many packaged-food labels, ingredients appear from greatest to least weight when the product is made.

A gecko saw a bright moth resting beyond a clear wall.

Around the seventh century BCE, people in ancient Lydia in western Anatolia began using stamped pieces of electrum, a mixture of gold and silver.