What does prairie mean?
Word: Prairie
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Prairie means a very large area of flat land covered in grass, with few trees, especially in North America.
Synonyms: grassland
How do you spell prairie?
Syllables: prai - rie
Tricky part: Two vowels sit side by side before the r. Students hear one sound and drop one of them.
Watch out for: prarie, prerie
Memory tip: Fair, hair, chair, prairie: the sound in the first part is the same, and so are its letters.
Prairie in a sentence
Example 1: Wild flowers cover the prairie in early summer.
Example 2: The farmhouse stood alone on the wide Canadian prairie.
Example 3: In the film, a small train crosses an endless prairie.
Fun Fact
Prairie is the French word for a meadow. French explorers in North America used it for the huge grasslands they found there, and the name stuck.
Practise the CREST Way
Word Champ
Choose the correct option to make a meaningful word:
prair_ _
a) ee
b) ie
c) ay
d) ey
Show answer
b) ie. Movie and calorie finish this soft sound with the same two letters.
Word Puzzle
Match the words with the correct options:
1. prairie 2. delta 3. plateau a. high, flat land that stands well above the country around it b. open grass country where bison once grazed in huge herds c. low land shaped by a river as it splits before reaching the sea
a) 1-b, 2-a, 3-c
b) 1-a, 2-c, 3-b
c) 1-c, 2-b, 3-a
d) 1-b, 2-c, 3-a
Show answer
d) 1-b, 2-c, 3-a. Bison herds point to the grass country, the splitting river to the delta and the raised land to the plateau.
Sound Check
In which word is 'ai' pronounced differently?
a) daily
b) dairy
c) prairie
d) fairly
Show answer
a) daily. Daily has the long a of day; the other three share the sound in air.
Word Tally
You get 2 marks for each correctly spelt word in the list. How many marks will you get?
prairie, desert, meadow, vally, forist, canyon
a) 10
b) 8
c) 4
d) 6
Show answer
b) 8. Valley and forest are misspelt, so four words score: 4 x 2 = 8.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. What would a farmer on the Canadian prairies most likely grow?
a) tea on steep hillsides
b) wheat across wide fields
c) coconuts along the coast
d) rice in flooded terraces
Show answer
b) wheat across wide fields
2. Which sight would a traveller on a prairie be least likely to meet?
a) a long straight road
b) a herd of cattle
c) a huge sky
d) a thick forest
Show answer
d) a thick forest
