Volcanoes can be summarized in 3 sentences: Volcanoes form when magma pushes up through cracks in the Earth's crust, bursting out as lava or exploding into the air. Powerful eruptions can blast rock and ash high into the sky, leaving behind a crater at the summit and coating the surrounding area with billowy flows of molten rock or jagged cinders. The molten rock cools and hardens over time into new landforms that are gradually weathered by wind and rain.

1. Volcanoes
I can determine the
meaning of and use
key vocabulary
words correctly.

2. Billowy

3. Thin, hot, quick moving lava called
pahoeloe forms a smooth, billowy
surface

4. Billowy (adj)- rising in a great wave

5. Cinders

6. Collide
After a volcanic eruption, cinders cover the
ground around the blast zone.

7. Cinders (n) – charred
bits of rock; ashes.

8. Crater

9. Funnel Cloud
• A crater can be found at the top of a volcano after
an eruption. It can look like a large bowl shaped
hole.

10. Funnel Cloud
• Crater (n) – a bowl-shaped depression

11. Crust

12. • When the Earth’s crust cracks, often
Jagged
cinders and ash will be released.

13. Jagged
• Crust (n)- the solid outer layer of the
Earth.

14. Eruption

15. Lightning
• The eruption rocked the ground and
covered the town with debris.

16. Lightning
• Eruption (n)- a volcanic explosion or large
flow of lava

17. Lava

18. Prairies
• Lava slowly
oozed out of the
crack in the
Earth’s crust.

19. Prairies
• Lava (n)- hot
melted rock
that flows
from a
volcano.

20. Magma

21. Rotate
• Magma pushes up through the Earth’s
crust, and bursts into the world as lava.

22. Magma (n)- hot melted rock
underneath the Earth’s surface.

23. Molten

24. Severe
• The molten rock exploded from the crater
raining balls of fire down upon the forest.

25. Molten (adj)- made liquid by
heat.

26. Summit

27. Sizzling
• The summit of Mt. St. Helen’s was blown
off by a powerful eruption in 1980.

28. Summit (n) the top of a
mountain

29. Weathered

30. Tornadoes
• The wind, rain and ocean weathered the
rocks into pock marked lumps.

31. Weathered (v)- changed because
of being exposed to the weather.

32. Vocabulary for Volcanoes by
Seymour Simon