Deserts

Deserts

Deserts
Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 4 to 8
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	8.7

Vocabulary

	challenging words:		excess, waxy, extensive, definitely, occasionally, encounter, entire, settled, sagebrush, southwestern, stems, remain, certainly, indeed, receive, roots
	content words:		United States, Great Basin Desert, Mojave Desert, Sonoran Desert, Chihuahuan Desert, New Mexico, Sahara Desert

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Deserts

¹ Deserts are definitely one of the harshest places to live. With just a few inches of rainfall every year, desert animals and plants have proven themselves great survivors. Indeed, for a place to be defined as a desert, it must receive less than 10 inches of rainfall in an entire year. So, where can we find deserts? Well, we don't have to go far, because there are four in the United States - Great Basin Desert, Mojave Desert, Sonoran Desert, and Chihuahuan Desert. These four deserts take up about 15% of the total territory of the United States, stretching across many western and southwestern states such as New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and California.

² We usually picture a desert as a very hot and dry place with sand dunes extending for miles and miles. This is a very vivid image of the Sahara Desert of Africa. The Sahara Desert is the world's largest desert and it is about the size of the United States. When we are in the Sahara, we occasionally see lines of camels carrying heavy loads of goods and moving slowly across the desert. Tired and thirsty, we certainly don't want to encounter a sandstorm. In fact, we have nothing else on our mind than arriving safely at the nearest oasis to get some rest and, most importantly, water!

Paragraphs 3 to 4:
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