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Inventors and Inventions

The Invention of Chewing Gum

The Invention of Chewing Gum
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 6 to 7
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   6.39

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    bite-sized, candy-coated, candy-flavored, chicle, Dubble, light-pink, resin, sapodilla, spearmint, tutti-frutti, licorice, hearing, evergreen, substitute, sugar-free, sugary
     content words:    American Indians, New England, John Curtis, Thomas Adams, United States, Walter Diemer, Dubble Bubble

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The Invention of Chewing Gum
By Sharon Fabian 		  
1     Chewing gum! There are the big light-pink wads of soft, sugary, candy-flavored gum that are good for both chewing and blowing bubbles. There are also the neat little sticks, flavored with peppermint or spearmint, to name just two of the many flavors, that come wrapped in foil and paper, ready to peel and pop in you mouth any time you feel like chewing (except in school, of course). There are the shiny, little, white squares of candy coated gum as well, and big colorful candy-coated gumballs in fancy gumball machines at the mall.
 
2     With all of this gum available for your chewing enjoyment today, did you ever wonder where chewing gum came from? Who invented it? Or how they made it?
 
3     Chewing gum has been around since ancient times. The history of chewing gum is not a short story. Gum didn't have just one inventor, but rather several people who made improvements along the way. Here is a short version of the story of chewing gum.
 
4     Artifacts from prehistoric times show that ancient people chewed natural tree gum. A 6,500-year-old wad of gum with teeth marks in it was found in Sweden.
 
5     The ancient Greeks chewed gum, which was actually just tree resin.

Paragraphs 6 to 13:
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