edHelper.com

Lensey Namioka

---

Lensey Namioka
Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 6 to 9
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	9.8

Vocabulary

	challenging words:		linguist, largely, romance, phonetic, unemployed, invasion, best, feudal, knowledgeable, entertainment, writing, committee, fiction, mathematics, span, successful
	content words:		Lensey Namioka, Buwei Yang Chao, Yuenren Chao, United States, Radcliffe College, Asian Studies, Isaac Namioka, New York, Wells College, Cornell University

---

Print Lensey Namioka

Print Lensey Namioka  (font options, pick words for additional puzzles, and more)

Quickly Print - PDF format

	Quickly Print: PDF (2 columns per page)
	Quickly Print: PDF (full page)

Quickly Print - HTML format

Quickly Print: HTML

Proofreading Activity

Print a proofreading activity

---

Feedback on Lensey Namioka

Leave your feedback on Lensey Namioka  (use this link if you found an error in the story)

---

Lensey Namioka By JamieKee

---

¹     At eight years old, author Lensey Namioka wrote her very first book. The book was about a woman warrior, and it was written on scraps of paper sewn together with thread. Already it was evident that this promising young writer demonstrated great potential. Now more than thirty years later, Lensey Namioka has succeeded is becoming an accomplished author of books for children and young adults.
 
²     Lensey Namioka was born in Beijing, China, in 1929. She is the daughter of Buwei Yang Chao, a surgeon, and Yuenren Chao, a linguist who specialized in the Chinese language and dialects. Named by her father, Lensey has an exclusive name. Around the time of Lensey's birth, the Chinese government decided to create a writing system that would be easier for people to learn. Because he was so knowledgeable of the Chinese language, her father was on the committee. He had to first help create a phonetic system. In doing this, Lensey's father discovered two syllables in the Chinese language that actually had no Chinese words that use them. The syllables are written as len and sey in English. It's from her father's discovery that Lensey got her name. Lensey writes, "That was how I wound up with a name that looks plausible, but which makes every Chinese say, ‘Huh?' It also guarantees that nobody else in the world has (or would want) a name like mine."
 
³     Lensey's family moved multiple times while they lived in China. She even moved to the United States briefly as a very young child. However, her family returned to the United States permanently in 1938 largely because of the Japanese invasion into China. Lensey's family made their way to Hawaii and later settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Lensey attended grade school. Like many others who have moved to a new country, Lensey struggled to learn a language that was so different from her native Chinese. She brought Chinese books with her from China. However, once she mastered English, Lensey eagerly read book after book in her neighborhood library. Although she excelled in math, Lensey especially enjoyed writing.

Paragraphs 4 to 9:
For the complete story with questions: click here for printable

---

Weekly Reading Books

Create Weekly Reading Books Prepare for an entire week at once!

---

More Activities, Lesson Plans, and Worksheets

Back to School Graphic Organizers Alphabet Worksheets Sight Words Math Worksheets Mazes 50 States Monthly Themes January February March April May June July August September October November December

Fractions Place Value Time and Calendar Money Earth Day Solar System Analogies Nouns Following Directions Listening Capitalization Cursive Writing Patterns and Sequencing Dinosaurs All About Me Kindergarten First Grade Second Grade Third Grade Fourth Grade Fifth Grade Sixth Grade

Multiplication Division Main Idea Cause and Effect Measurement Decimals Rounding Order of Operations Verbs Community Helpers Adjectives Plants Grammar Addition and Subtraction Contractions Bulletin Board Ideas Word Searches Crossword Puzzles Printable Puzzles Reading Comprehension Reading Skills English Language Arts

Copyright © 2011 edHelper