Worksheet

Prove a reading of the text, not just a fact

Grade 11 Reading Worksheet - Building Confidence

NameDate

Circle the best answer.

  1. Read this first

    The Last Chair (story)

    [1] After their mother's funeral, Odalys Reyes and her brother Teo gave themselves a long weekend to divide the contents of the house on Fenner Road, a task they had agreed to finish before either of them went back to work. [2] Odalys, who had flown in from Denver, labeled each box in marker and produced a spreadsheet that assigned each lamp, quilt and casserole dish a dollar value. [3] Teo, who still lived ten minutes away and had visited their mother each Sunday, mostly carried boxes and said he would take whatever was left.

    [4] When the spreadsheet reached the dining room, Odalys priced the walnut table at fourteen hundred dollars and suggested that they sell it and split the money. [5] "It's the one thing in the house that anyone would pay for," she said, and she kept her eyes on the screen until she had finished typing the sentence. [6] Teo shrugged and opened the cabinet under the window, where the mismatched kitchen chairs had been stacked together for years, one of them noticeably crooked and missing a rung. [7] "I'll take this one," he said, lifting out the broken chair, "if no one else wants it."

    [8] Odalys laughed, because the chair had been listed at four dollars in the inventory she had spent the whole morning compiling, and she deleted the number from her sheet. [9] That evening she found Teo on the back porch with the chair upside down across his knees, a tube of wood glue beside him and a flashlight clamped under his arm. [10] He had sanded the splintered end of the rung and was fitting it, grain to grain, into the hole it had left. [11] "You could buy a better one for forty dollars," she said, standing in the doorway with her arms folded against the evening chill. [12] Teo kept turning the rung until it seated, then wiped the excess glue from the joint with his thumb and held the chair up to the porch light to judge the angle. [13] "This is the one with the gouge," he said, "where Dad dropped the skillet."

    [14] Odalys looked at the seat, where a thin scar ran beside the left leg, and said nothing more about the spreadsheet for the rest of the evening. [15] When she flew home on Monday, the walnut table still stood in the dining room, and the chair, repaired and clamped to dry, sat in the middle of the kitchen floor.

  2. Ari is proving why someone acts. Claim: “Teo asks for the broken chair because it carries a memory for him, and he asks in a way that avoids an argument.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reason, not a rival one?

    • [3] Teo, who still lived ten minutes away and had visited their mother each Sunday, mostly carried boxes and said he would take whatever was left. [6] Teo shrugged and opened the cabinet under the window, where the mismatched kitchen chairs had been stacked together for years, one of them noticeably crooked and missing a rung.
    • [2] Odalys, who had flown in from Denver, labeled each box in marker and produced a spreadsheet that assigned each lamp, quilt and casserole dish a dollar value. [4] When the spreadsheet reached the dining room, Odalys priced the walnut table at fourteen hundred dollars and suggested that they sell it and split the money.
    • [7] "I'll take this one," he said, lifting out the broken chair, "if no one else wants it." [13] "This is the one with the gouge," he said, "where Dad dropped the skillet."
    • [9] That evening she found Teo on the back porch with the chair upside down across his knees, a tube of wood glue beside him and a flashlight clamped under his arm. [10] He had sanded the splintered end of the rung and was fitting it, grain to grain, into the hole it had left.

  3. Bo is proving what a person is like. Claim: “Odalys's attention to prices is a way of getting through a painful task, not a sign that she cares little.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reading, not a rival one?

    • [5] "It's the one thing in the house that anyone would pay for," she said, and she kept her eyes on the screen until she had finished typing the sentence. [14] Odalys looked at the seat, where a thin scar ran beside the left leg, and said nothing more about the spreadsheet for the rest of the evening.
    • [2] Odalys, who had flown in from Denver, labeled each box in marker and produced a spreadsheet that assigned each lamp, quilt and casserole dish a dollar value. [4] When the spreadsheet reached the dining room, Odalys priced the walnut table at fourteen hundred dollars and suggested that they sell it and split the money.
    • [8] Odalys laughed, because the chair had been listed at four dollars in the inventory she had spent the whole morning compiling, and she deleted the number from her sheet. [11] "You could buy a better one for forty dollars," she said, standing in the doorway with her arms folded against the evening chill.
    • [1] After their mother's funeral, Odalys Reyes and her brother Teo gave themselves a long weekend to divide the contents of the house on Fenner Road, a task they had agreed to finish before either of them went back to work. [3] Teo, who still lived ten minutes away and had visited their mother each Sunday, mostly carried boxes and said he would take whatever was left.

  4. Esme is proving what a detail shows. Claim: “The table left standing in the last sentence shows that Odalys has quietly dropped her plan to sell it.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reading, not a rival one?

    • [4] When the spreadsheet reached the dining room, Odalys priced the walnut table at fourteen hundred dollars and suggested that they sell it and split the money. [5] "It's the one thing in the house that anyone would pay for," she said, and she kept her eyes on the screen until she had finished typing the sentence.
    • [14] Odalys looked at the seat, where a thin scar ran beside the left leg, and said nothing more about the spreadsheet for the rest of the evening. [15] When she flew home on Monday, the walnut table still stood in the dining room, and the chair, repaired and clamped to dry, sat in the middle of the kitchen floor.
    • [1] After their mother's funeral, Odalys Reyes and her brother Teo gave themselves a long weekend to divide the contents of the house on Fenner Road, a task they had agreed to finish before either of them went back to work. [15] When she flew home on Monday, the walnut table still stood in the dining room, and the chair, repaired and clamped to dry, sat in the middle of the kitchen floor.
    • [8] Odalys laughed, because the chair had been listed at four dollars in the inventory she had spent the whole morning compiling, and she deleted the number from her sheet. [11] "You could buy a better one for forty dollars," she said, standing in the doorway with her arms folded against the evening chill.

  5. Night Bread (story)

    [1] At two in the morning the bakery on Ladd Street smelled of yeast and scorched flour, and Imre Kovacs, who had run it for thirty-one years, was teaching his new apprentice, Dana, to shape rye loaves. [2] "Fold it toward you, then push it away," he said, "and do not tell me that it feels wrong, because it feels wrong throughout the first year of learning." [3] Dana folded and pushed, and the first three loaves came out so lopsided that Imre set them aside, without comment, on a rack that was reserved for the staff. [4] He did not scold, but he did not praise either, and Dana noticed that he wiped the counter after each loaf as though erasing evidence.

    [5] On the fourth night a man in a delivery jacket came to the back door to ask whether the bakery would take on a second oven. [6] Imre said that the old oven had been enough for his father and was enough for him, and he shut the door with the flat of his hand. [7] Later Dana saw the man's business card pinned to the corkboard beside a faded photograph of two men in aprons standing in front of the very oven in question. [8] One of them was Imre, forty years younger, and the other, taller, held a long wooden peel as though it were an oar.

    [9] By the second week Dana's loaves were nearly even, and Imre began to leave the bench for several minutes at a time, standing motionless at the back door in the dark. [10] On the last Friday he returned with two cups of coffee, set one beside Dana's elbow and watched, without speaking, while she sliced open a loaf to examine the crumb. [11] "Too tight," he said, but he tore himself a heel from the very same loaf. [12] He ate it standing up, slowly, in the manner of a person who tastes something chiefly in order to remember it. [13] When the bell over the front door rang at six, he let Dana carry the first tray out to the case, and he stayed behind the counter, wiping nothing.

  6. Jun is proving why someone acts. Claim: “Imre turns down the second oven because the old one ties him to his father's work, not just because he dislikes salespeople.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reason, not a rival one?

    • [5] On the fourth night a man in a delivery jacket came to the back door to ask whether the bakery would take on a second oven. [7] Later Dana saw the man's business card pinned to the corkboard beside a faded photograph of two men in aprons standing in front of the very oven in question.
    • [6] Imre said that the old oven had been enough for his father and was enough for him, and he shut the door with the flat of his hand. [8] One of them was Imre, forty years younger, and the other, taller, held a long wooden peel as though it were an oar.
    • [3] Dana folded and pushed, and the first three loaves came out so lopsided that Imre set them aside, without comment, on a rack that was reserved for the staff. [4] He did not scold, but he did not praise either, and Dana noticed that he wiped the counter after each loaf as though erasing evidence.
    • [1] At two in the morning the bakery on Ladd Street smelled of yeast and scorched flour, and Imre Kovacs, who had run it for thirty-one years, was teaching his new apprentice, Dana, to shape rye loaves. [2] "Fold it toward you, then push it away," he said, "and do not tell me that it feels wrong, because it feels wrong throughout the first year of learning."

  7. Kira is proving what a person is like. Claim: “Imre shows approval through what he does rather than what he says.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reading, not a rival one?

    • [2] "Fold it toward you, then push it away," he said, "and do not tell me that it feels wrong, because it feels wrong throughout the first year of learning." [6] Imre said that the old oven had been enough for his father and was enough for him, and he shut the door with the flat of his hand.
    • [9] By the second week Dana's loaves were nearly even, and Imre began to leave the bench for several minutes at a time, standing motionless at the back door in the dark. [13] When the bell over the front door rang at six, he let Dana carry the first tray out to the case, and he stayed behind the counter, wiping nothing.
    • [3] Dana folded and pushed, and the first three loaves came out so lopsided that Imre set them aside, without comment, on a rack that was reserved for the staff. [4] He did not scold, but he did not praise either, and Dana noticed that he wiped the counter after each loaf as though erasing evidence.
    • [10] On the last Friday he returned with two cups of coffee, set one beside Dana's elbow and watched, without speaking, while she sliced open a loaf to examine the crumb. [11] "Too tight," he said, but he tore himself a heel from the very same loaf.

  8. Luz is proving what a detail shows. Claim: “The image of Imre wiping nothing shows a habit of nervous cleaning that now fills a moment of letting go.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reading, not a rival one?

    • [1] At two in the morning the bakery on Ladd Street smelled of yeast and scorched flour, and Imre Kovacs, who had run it for thirty-one years, was teaching his new apprentice, Dana, to shape rye loaves. [2] "Fold it toward you, then push it away," he said, "and do not tell me that it feels wrong, because it feels wrong throughout the first year of learning."
    • [4] He did not scold, but he did not praise either, and Dana noticed that he wiped the counter after each loaf as though erasing evidence. [13] When the bell over the front door rang at six, he let Dana carry the first tray out to the case, and he stayed behind the counter, wiping nothing.
    • [5] On the fourth night a man in a delivery jacket came to the back door to ask whether the bakery would take on a second oven. [6] Imre said that the old oven had been enough for his father and was enough for him, and he shut the door with the flat of his hand.
    • [9] By the second week Dana's loaves were nearly even, and Imre began to leave the bench for several minutes at a time, standing motionless at the back door in the dark. [10] On the last Friday he returned with two cups of coffee, set one beside Dana's elbow and watched, without speaking, while she sliced open a loaf to examine the crumb.

  9. The Pool at Dunmore (feature story about an invented town)

    [1] The town council of Dunmore voted six to one in March to close the municipal pool, which opened in 1958 and had, in the words of the staff report, "reached the end of its serviceable life." [2] The report listed a cracked basin, a boiler older than most of the lifeguards and repair estimates that rose with each page, and no one at the meeting disputed any of it. [3] What the report did not list was Mr. Alvarado, who has swum laps at six each morning since before the report's author was born.

    [4] On the last day of the season a reporter found him at the shallow end, adjusting his goggles, and asked whether he planned to protest. [5] "Protest what?" he said. "They're right about the boiler." [6] He swam his forty laps, climbed out and thanked the teenage lifeguard by name, which she acknowledged with the faint alarm of someone not used to being noticed.

    [7] The pool had lost money since the 1980s, and the council had known it for years; swim lessons cost twenty dollars a summer, and the snack bar sold candy at prices set in the Eisenhower era. [8] A consultant hired in 2015 had suggested raising fees, adding a slide and renting the deck for birthday parties, and the council had filed the suggestion under "later." [9] Meanwhile the pool's parking lot had become the place where the high school band practiced each August, where a crossing guard taught her granddaughter to ride a bicycle and where, on Fridays in June, a widower named Hollis Prewitt sat in his truck with the windows down, eating a sandwich and listening to the splash.

    [10] The council's plan is to fill the basin with gravel and sell the lot to a developer who has promised "mixed-use space." [11] The developer's brochure shows a coffee shop, four apartments and a bench. [12] It does not show a boiler, a basin or anyone swimming. [13] On his way out on the last day, Mr. Alvarado paused at the gate, ran a hand along the chain-link as though checking it for rust, and left it unlatched behind him. [14] Dunmore, it turns out, has more tolerance for sensible decisions than it has practice at mourning them.

  10. Milo is proving why someone acts. Claim: “Mr. Alvarado does not protest because he accepts the reasons for closing, yet he still marks the loss in a small private way.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reason, not a rival one?

    • [2] The report listed a cracked basin, a boiler older than most of the lifeguards and repair estimates that rose with each page, and no one at the meeting disputed any of it. [5] "Protest what?" he said. "They're right about the boiler."
    • [7] The pool had lost money since the 1980s, and the council had known it for years; swim lessons cost twenty dollars a summer, and the snack bar sold candy at prices set in the Eisenhower era. [8] A consultant hired in 2015 had suggested raising fees, adding a slide and renting the deck for birthday parties, and the council had filed the suggestion under "later."
    • [5] "Protest what?" he said. "They're right about the boiler." [13] On his way out on the last day, Mr. Alvarado paused at the gate, ran a hand along the chain-link as though checking it for rust, and left it unlatched behind him.
    • [3] What the report did not list was Mr. Alvarado, who has swum laps at six each morning since before the report's author was born. [4] On the last day of the season a reporter found him at the shallow end, adjusting his goggles, and asked whether he planned to protest.

  11. Pia is proving what a detail shows. Claim: “Hollis Prewitt and his truck are included to show that the pool served needs a repair report could not measure.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reading, not a rival one?

    • [7] The pool had lost money since the 1980s, and the council had known it for years; swim lessons cost twenty dollars a summer, and the snack bar sold candy at prices set in the Eisenhower era. [8] A consultant hired in 2015 had suggested raising fees, adding a slide and renting the deck for birthday parties, and the council had filed the suggestion under "later."
    • [4] On the last day of the season a reporter found him at the shallow end, adjusting his goggles, and asked whether he planned to protest. [5] "Protest what?" he said. "They're right about the boiler."
    • [10] The council's plan is to fill the basin with gravel and sell the lot to a developer who has promised "mixed-use space." [11] The developer's brochure shows a coffee shop, four apartments and a bench.
    • [2] The report listed a cracked basin, a boiler older than most of the lifeguards and repair estimates that rose with each page, and no one at the meeting disputed any of it. [9] Meanwhile the pool's parking lot had become the place where the high school band practiced each August, where a crossing guard taught her granddaughter to ride a bicycle and where, on Fridays in June, a widower named Hollis Prewitt sat in his truck with the windows down, eating a sandwich and listening to the splash.

  12. The Gaps in Mendeleev's Table (article)

    [1] In 1869 the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev was writing a chemistry textbook for his students in St. Petersburg, and he needed a sensible order for the sixty-three elements then known. [2] He listed the elements by atomic weight and noticed that similar properties returned at regular intervals, so that lithium, sodium and potassium, for example, fell into one family. [3] Earlier chemists had glimpsed parts of this pattern, but most of them placed each known element in the next open space, even when its properties did not fit there.

    [4] Mendeleev instead left empty places in his table and wrote question marks where he believed undiscovered elements belonged. [5] He argued that the accepted atomic weights of several elements, including uranium, had been measured wrongly, because those numbers put the elements in the wrong families. [6] For the same reason he placed tellurium ahead of iodine, even though tellurium was heavier, since iodine behaved so much like chlorine and bromine. [7] In 1871 he went further and predicted the weight, density and chemical behavior of three missing elements, which he called eka-aluminum, eka-boron and eka-silicon. [8] Many chemists remained unconvinced, and some saw such detailed predictions as bold guesses rather than as science. [9] In Germany, Lothar Meyer had published a similar table in 1870, and in 1882 Britain's Royal Society gave its Davy Medal to both men together.

    [10] In 1875 the French chemist Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran discovered a new metal, gallium, and reported its density as about 4.7 grams per cubic centimeter. [11] Mendeleev wrote that gallium was his eka-aluminum and that its true density should be close to 5.9, although he had not seen a sample of the metal. [12] When Lecoq de Boisbaudran purified a fresh sample and measured it again, the density came out at about 5.9, very close to the predicted value. [13] Scandium was found in 1879 and germanium in 1886, and both matched the predictions so closely that most doubters began to take the table seriously.

    [14] Mendeleev kept revising his textbook for decades, and its later editions used the table to organize whole chapters for students. [15] Today element 101 bears the name mendelevium, and a version of his table hangs in chemistry classrooms around the world.

  13. Tala is proving what a person is like. Claim: “Mendeleev's boldness was disciplined: his predictions were specific enough to be tested.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reading, not a rival one?

    • [7] In 1871 he went further and predicted the weight, density and chemical behavior of three missing elements, which he called eka-aluminum, eka-boron and eka-silicon. [11] Mendeleev wrote that gallium was his eka-aluminum and that its true density should be close to 5.9, although he had not seen a sample of the metal.
    • [5] He argued that the accepted atomic weights of several elements, including uranium, had been measured wrongly, because those numbers put the elements in the wrong families. [6] For the same reason he placed tellurium ahead of iodine, even though tellurium was heavier, since iodine behaved so much like chlorine and bromine.
    • [4] Mendeleev instead left empty places in his table and wrote question marks where he believed undiscovered elements belonged. [8] Many chemists remained unconvinced, and some saw such detailed predictions as bold guesses rather than as science.
    • [12] When Lecoq de Boisbaudran purified a fresh sample and measured it again, the density came out at about 5.9, very close to the predicted value. [13] Scandium was found in 1879 and germanium in 1886, and both matched the predictions so closely that most doubters began to take the table seriously.

  14. Zee is proving what a detail shows. Claim: “The article mentions Meyer and the Davy Medal to show that the table was an idea ready to be found, not Mendeleev's alone.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reading, not a rival one?

    • [14] Mendeleev kept revising his textbook for decades, and its later editions used the table to organize whole chapters for students. [15] Today element 101 bears the name mendelevium, and a version of his table hangs in chemistry classrooms around the world.
    • [3] Earlier chemists had glimpsed parts of this pattern, but most of them placed each known element in the next open space, even when its properties did not fit there. [9] In Germany, Lothar Meyer had published a similar table in 1870, and in 1882 Britain's Royal Society gave its Davy Medal to both men together.
    • [7] In 1871 he went further and predicted the weight, density and chemical behavior of three missing elements, which he called eka-aluminum, eka-boron and eka-silicon. [8] Many chemists remained unconvinced, and some saw such detailed predictions as bold guesses rather than as science.
    • [13] Scandium was found in 1879 and germanium in 1886, and both matched the predictions so closely that most doubters began to take the table seriously. [14] Mendeleev kept revising his textbook for decades, and its later editions used the table to organize whole chapters for students.
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Prove a reading of the text, not just a fact

Answer Key - Grade 11 Reading Worksheet - Building Confidence

Circle the best answer.

  1. Read this first

    The Last Chair (story)

    [1] After their mother's funeral, Odalys Reyes and her brother Teo gave themselves a long weekend to divide the contents of the house on Fenner Road, a task they had agreed to finish before either of them went back to work. [2] Odalys, who had flown in from Denver, labeled each box in marker and produced a spreadsheet that assigned each lamp, quilt and casserole dish a dollar value. [3] Teo, who still lived ten minutes away and had visited their mother each Sunday, mostly carried boxes and said he would take whatever was left.

    [4] When the spreadsheet reached the dining room, Odalys priced the walnut table at fourteen hundred dollars and suggested that they sell it and split the money. [5] "It's the one thing in the house that anyone would pay for," she said, and she kept her eyes on the screen until she had finished typing the sentence. [6] Teo shrugged and opened the cabinet under the window, where the mismatched kitchen chairs had been stacked together for years, one of them noticeably crooked and missing a rung. [7] "I'll take this one," he said, lifting out the broken chair, "if no one else wants it."

    [8] Odalys laughed, because the chair had been listed at four dollars in the inventory she had spent the whole morning compiling, and she deleted the number from her sheet. [9] That evening she found Teo on the back porch with the chair upside down across his knees, a tube of wood glue beside him and a flashlight clamped under his arm. [10] He had sanded the splintered end of the rung and was fitting it, grain to grain, into the hole it had left. [11] "You could buy a better one for forty dollars," she said, standing in the doorway with her arms folded against the evening chill. [12] Teo kept turning the rung until it seated, then wiped the excess glue from the joint with his thumb and held the chair up to the porch light to judge the angle. [13] "This is the one with the gouge," he said, "where Dad dropped the skillet."

    [14] Odalys looked at the seat, where a thin scar ran beside the left leg, and said nothing more about the spreadsheet for the rest of the evening. [15] When she flew home on Monday, the walnut table still stood in the dining room, and the chair, repaired and clamped to dry, sat in the middle of the kitchen floor.

  2. Ari is proving why someone acts. Claim: “Teo asks for the broken chair because it carries a memory for him, and he asks in a way that avoids an argument.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reason, not a rival one?

    • [3] Teo, who still lived ten minutes away and had visited their mother each Sunday, mostly carried boxes and said he would take whatever was left. [6] Teo shrugged and opened the cabinet under the window, where the mismatched kitchen chairs had been stacked together for years, one of them noticeably crooked and missing a rung.
    • [2] Odalys, who had flown in from Denver, labeled each box in marker and produced a spreadsheet that assigned each lamp, quilt and casserole dish a dollar value. [4] When the spreadsheet reached the dining room, Odalys priced the walnut table at fourteen hundred dollars and suggested that they sell it and split the money.
    • [7] "I'll take this one," he said, lifting out the broken chair, "if no one else wants it." [13] "This is the one with the gouge," he said, "where Dad dropped the skillet."
    • [9] That evening she found Teo on the back porch with the chair upside down across his knees, a tube of wood glue beside him and a flashlight clamped under his arm. [10] He had sanded the splintered end of the rung and was fitting it, grain to grain, into the hole it had left.

  3. Bo is proving what a person is like. Claim: “Odalys's attention to prices is a way of getting through a painful task, not a sign that she cares little.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reading, not a rival one?

    • [5] "It's the one thing in the house that anyone would pay for," she said, and she kept her eyes on the screen until she had finished typing the sentence. [14] Odalys looked at the seat, where a thin scar ran beside the left leg, and said nothing more about the spreadsheet for the rest of the evening.
    • [2] Odalys, who had flown in from Denver, labeled each box in marker and produced a spreadsheet that assigned each lamp, quilt and casserole dish a dollar value. [4] When the spreadsheet reached the dining room, Odalys priced the walnut table at fourteen hundred dollars and suggested that they sell it and split the money.
    • [8] Odalys laughed, because the chair had been listed at four dollars in the inventory she had spent the whole morning compiling, and she deleted the number from her sheet. [11] "You could buy a better one for forty dollars," she said, standing in the doorway with her arms folded against the evening chill.
    • [1] After their mother's funeral, Odalys Reyes and her brother Teo gave themselves a long weekend to divide the contents of the house on Fenner Road, a task they had agreed to finish before either of them went back to work. [3] Teo, who still lived ten minutes away and had visited their mother each Sunday, mostly carried boxes and said he would take whatever was left.

  4. Esme is proving what a detail shows. Claim: “The table left standing in the last sentence shows that Odalys has quietly dropped her plan to sell it.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reading, not a rival one?

    • [4] When the spreadsheet reached the dining room, Odalys priced the walnut table at fourteen hundred dollars and suggested that they sell it and split the money. [5] "It's the one thing in the house that anyone would pay for," she said, and she kept her eyes on the screen until she had finished typing the sentence.
    • [14] Odalys looked at the seat, where a thin scar ran beside the left leg, and said nothing more about the spreadsheet for the rest of the evening. [15] When she flew home on Monday, the walnut table still stood in the dining room, and the chair, repaired and clamped to dry, sat in the middle of the kitchen floor.
    • [1] After their mother's funeral, Odalys Reyes and her brother Teo gave themselves a long weekend to divide the contents of the house on Fenner Road, a task they had agreed to finish before either of them went back to work. [15] When she flew home on Monday, the walnut table still stood in the dining room, and the chair, repaired and clamped to dry, sat in the middle of the kitchen floor.
    • [8] Odalys laughed, because the chair had been listed at four dollars in the inventory she had spent the whole morning compiling, and she deleted the number from her sheet. [11] "You could buy a better one for forty dollars," she said, standing in the doorway with her arms folded against the evening chill.

  5. Night Bread (story)

    [1] At two in the morning the bakery on Ladd Street smelled of yeast and scorched flour, and Imre Kovacs, who had run it for thirty-one years, was teaching his new apprentice, Dana, to shape rye loaves. [2] "Fold it toward you, then push it away," he said, "and do not tell me that it feels wrong, because it feels wrong throughout the first year of learning." [3] Dana folded and pushed, and the first three loaves came out so lopsided that Imre set them aside, without comment, on a rack that was reserved for the staff. [4] He did not scold, but he did not praise either, and Dana noticed that he wiped the counter after each loaf as though erasing evidence.

    [5] On the fourth night a man in a delivery jacket came to the back door to ask whether the bakery would take on a second oven. [6] Imre said that the old oven had been enough for his father and was enough for him, and he shut the door with the flat of his hand. [7] Later Dana saw the man's business card pinned to the corkboard beside a faded photograph of two men in aprons standing in front of the very oven in question. [8] One of them was Imre, forty years younger, and the other, taller, held a long wooden peel as though it were an oar.

    [9] By the second week Dana's loaves were nearly even, and Imre began to leave the bench for several minutes at a time, standing motionless at the back door in the dark. [10] On the last Friday he returned with two cups of coffee, set one beside Dana's elbow and watched, without speaking, while she sliced open a loaf to examine the crumb. [11] "Too tight," he said, but he tore himself a heel from the very same loaf. [12] He ate it standing up, slowly, in the manner of a person who tastes something chiefly in order to remember it. [13] When the bell over the front door rang at six, he let Dana carry the first tray out to the case, and he stayed behind the counter, wiping nothing.

  6. Jun is proving why someone acts. Claim: “Imre turns down the second oven because the old one ties him to his father's work, not just because he dislikes salespeople.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reason, not a rival one?

    • [5] On the fourth night a man in a delivery jacket came to the back door to ask whether the bakery would take on a second oven. [7] Later Dana saw the man's business card pinned to the corkboard beside a faded photograph of two men in aprons standing in front of the very oven in question.
    • [6] Imre said that the old oven had been enough for his father and was enough for him, and he shut the door with the flat of his hand. [8] One of them was Imre, forty years younger, and the other, taller, held a long wooden peel as though it were an oar.
    • [3] Dana folded and pushed, and the first three loaves came out so lopsided that Imre set them aside, without comment, on a rack that was reserved for the staff. [4] He did not scold, but he did not praise either, and Dana noticed that he wiped the counter after each loaf as though erasing evidence.
    • [1] At two in the morning the bakery on Ladd Street smelled of yeast and scorched flour, and Imre Kovacs, who had run it for thirty-one years, was teaching his new apprentice, Dana, to shape rye loaves. [2] "Fold it toward you, then push it away," he said, "and do not tell me that it feels wrong, because it feels wrong throughout the first year of learning."

  7. Kira is proving what a person is like. Claim: “Imre shows approval through what he does rather than what he says.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reading, not a rival one?

    • [2] "Fold it toward you, then push it away," he said, "and do not tell me that it feels wrong, because it feels wrong throughout the first year of learning." [6] Imre said that the old oven had been enough for his father and was enough for him, and he shut the door with the flat of his hand.
    • [9] By the second week Dana's loaves were nearly even, and Imre began to leave the bench for several minutes at a time, standing motionless at the back door in the dark. [13] When the bell over the front door rang at six, he let Dana carry the first tray out to the case, and he stayed behind the counter, wiping nothing.
    • [3] Dana folded and pushed, and the first three loaves came out so lopsided that Imre set them aside, without comment, on a rack that was reserved for the staff. [4] He did not scold, but he did not praise either, and Dana noticed that he wiped the counter after each loaf as though erasing evidence.
    • [10] On the last Friday he returned with two cups of coffee, set one beside Dana's elbow and watched, without speaking, while she sliced open a loaf to examine the crumb. [11] "Too tight," he said, but he tore himself a heel from the very same loaf.

  8. Luz is proving what a detail shows. Claim: “The image of Imre wiping nothing shows a habit of nervous cleaning that now fills a moment of letting go.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reading, not a rival one?

    • [1] At two in the morning the bakery on Ladd Street smelled of yeast and scorched flour, and Imre Kovacs, who had run it for thirty-one years, was teaching his new apprentice, Dana, to shape rye loaves. [2] "Fold it toward you, then push it away," he said, "and do not tell me that it feels wrong, because it feels wrong throughout the first year of learning."
    • [4] He did not scold, but he did not praise either, and Dana noticed that he wiped the counter after each loaf as though erasing evidence. [13] When the bell over the front door rang at six, he let Dana carry the first tray out to the case, and he stayed behind the counter, wiping nothing.
    • [5] On the fourth night a man in a delivery jacket came to the back door to ask whether the bakery would take on a second oven. [6] Imre said that the old oven had been enough for his father and was enough for him, and he shut the door with the flat of his hand.
    • [9] By the second week Dana's loaves were nearly even, and Imre began to leave the bench for several minutes at a time, standing motionless at the back door in the dark. [10] On the last Friday he returned with two cups of coffee, set one beside Dana's elbow and watched, without speaking, while she sliced open a loaf to examine the crumb.

  9. The Pool at Dunmore (feature story about an invented town)

    [1] The town council of Dunmore voted six to one in March to close the municipal pool, which opened in 1958 and had, in the words of the staff report, "reached the end of its serviceable life." [2] The report listed a cracked basin, a boiler older than most of the lifeguards and repair estimates that rose with each page, and no one at the meeting disputed any of it. [3] What the report did not list was Mr. Alvarado, who has swum laps at six each morning since before the report's author was born.

    [4] On the last day of the season a reporter found him at the shallow end, adjusting his goggles, and asked whether he planned to protest. [5] "Protest what?" he said. "They're right about the boiler." [6] He swam his forty laps, climbed out and thanked the teenage lifeguard by name, which she acknowledged with the faint alarm of someone not used to being noticed.

    [7] The pool had lost money since the 1980s, and the council had known it for years; swim lessons cost twenty dollars a summer, and the snack bar sold candy at prices set in the Eisenhower era. [8] A consultant hired in 2015 had suggested raising fees, adding a slide and renting the deck for birthday parties, and the council had filed the suggestion under "later." [9] Meanwhile the pool's parking lot had become the place where the high school band practiced each August, where a crossing guard taught her granddaughter to ride a bicycle and where, on Fridays in June, a widower named Hollis Prewitt sat in his truck with the windows down, eating a sandwich and listening to the splash.

    [10] The council's plan is to fill the basin with gravel and sell the lot to a developer who has promised "mixed-use space." [11] The developer's brochure shows a coffee shop, four apartments and a bench. [12] It does not show a boiler, a basin or anyone swimming. [13] On his way out on the last day, Mr. Alvarado paused at the gate, ran a hand along the chain-link as though checking it for rust, and left it unlatched behind him. [14] Dunmore, it turns out, has more tolerance for sensible decisions than it has practice at mourning them.

  10. Milo is proving why someone acts. Claim: “Mr. Alvarado does not protest because he accepts the reasons for closing, yet he still marks the loss in a small private way.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reason, not a rival one?

    • [2] The report listed a cracked basin, a boiler older than most of the lifeguards and repair estimates that rose with each page, and no one at the meeting disputed any of it. [5] "Protest what?" he said. "They're right about the boiler."
    • [7] The pool had lost money since the 1980s, and the council had known it for years; swim lessons cost twenty dollars a summer, and the snack bar sold candy at prices set in the Eisenhower era. [8] A consultant hired in 2015 had suggested raising fees, adding a slide and renting the deck for birthday parties, and the council had filed the suggestion under "later."
    • [5] "Protest what?" he said. "They're right about the boiler." [13] On his way out on the last day, Mr. Alvarado paused at the gate, ran a hand along the chain-link as though checking it for rust, and left it unlatched behind him.
    • [3] What the report did not list was Mr. Alvarado, who has swum laps at six each morning since before the report's author was born. [4] On the last day of the season a reporter found him at the shallow end, adjusting his goggles, and asked whether he planned to protest.

  11. Pia is proving what a detail shows. Claim: “Hollis Prewitt and his truck are included to show that the pool served needs a repair report could not measure.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reading, not a rival one?

    • [7] The pool had lost money since the 1980s, and the council had known it for years; swim lessons cost twenty dollars a summer, and the snack bar sold candy at prices set in the Eisenhower era. [8] A consultant hired in 2015 had suggested raising fees, adding a slide and renting the deck for birthday parties, and the council had filed the suggestion under "later."
    • [4] On the last day of the season a reporter found him at the shallow end, adjusting his goggles, and asked whether he planned to protest. [5] "Protest what?" he said. "They're right about the boiler."
    • [10] The council's plan is to fill the basin with gravel and sell the lot to a developer who has promised "mixed-use space." [11] The developer's brochure shows a coffee shop, four apartments and a bench.
    • [2] The report listed a cracked basin, a boiler older than most of the lifeguards and repair estimates that rose with each page, and no one at the meeting disputed any of it. [9] Meanwhile the pool's parking lot had become the place where the high school band practiced each August, where a crossing guard taught her granddaughter to ride a bicycle and where, on Fridays in June, a widower named Hollis Prewitt sat in his truck with the windows down, eating a sandwich and listening to the splash.

  12. The Gaps in Mendeleev's Table (article)

    [1] In 1869 the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev was writing a chemistry textbook for his students in St. Petersburg, and he needed a sensible order for the sixty-three elements then known. [2] He listed the elements by atomic weight and noticed that similar properties returned at regular intervals, so that lithium, sodium and potassium, for example, fell into one family. [3] Earlier chemists had glimpsed parts of this pattern, but most of them placed each known element in the next open space, even when its properties did not fit there.

    [4] Mendeleev instead left empty places in his table and wrote question marks where he believed undiscovered elements belonged. [5] He argued that the accepted atomic weights of several elements, including uranium, had been measured wrongly, because those numbers put the elements in the wrong families. [6] For the same reason he placed tellurium ahead of iodine, even though tellurium was heavier, since iodine behaved so much like chlorine and bromine. [7] In 1871 he went further and predicted the weight, density and chemical behavior of three missing elements, which he called eka-aluminum, eka-boron and eka-silicon. [8] Many chemists remained unconvinced, and some saw such detailed predictions as bold guesses rather than as science. [9] In Germany, Lothar Meyer had published a similar table in 1870, and in 1882 Britain's Royal Society gave its Davy Medal to both men together.

    [10] In 1875 the French chemist Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran discovered a new metal, gallium, and reported its density as about 4.7 grams per cubic centimeter. [11] Mendeleev wrote that gallium was his eka-aluminum and that its true density should be close to 5.9, although he had not seen a sample of the metal. [12] When Lecoq de Boisbaudran purified a fresh sample and measured it again, the density came out at about 5.9, very close to the predicted value. [13] Scandium was found in 1879 and germanium in 1886, and both matched the predictions so closely that most doubters began to take the table seriously.

    [14] Mendeleev kept revising his textbook for decades, and its later editions used the table to organize whole chapters for students. [15] Today element 101 bears the name mendelevium, and a version of his table hangs in chemistry classrooms around the world.

  13. Tala is proving what a person is like. Claim: “Mendeleev's boldness was disciplined: his predictions were specific enough to be tested.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reading, not a rival one?

    • [7] In 1871 he went further and predicted the weight, density and chemical behavior of three missing elements, which he called eka-aluminum, eka-boron and eka-silicon. [11] Mendeleev wrote that gallium was his eka-aluminum and that its true density should be close to 5.9, although he had not seen a sample of the metal.
    • [5] He argued that the accepted atomic weights of several elements, including uranium, had been measured wrongly, because those numbers put the elements in the wrong families. [6] For the same reason he placed tellurium ahead of iodine, even though tellurium was heavier, since iodine behaved so much like chlorine and bromine.
    • [4] Mendeleev instead left empty places in his table and wrote question marks where he believed undiscovered elements belonged. [8] Many chemists remained unconvinced, and some saw such detailed predictions as bold guesses rather than as science.
    • [12] When Lecoq de Boisbaudran purified a fresh sample and measured it again, the density came out at about 5.9, very close to the predicted value. [13] Scandium was found in 1879 and germanium in 1886, and both matched the predictions so closely that most doubters began to take the table seriously.

  14. Zee is proving what a detail shows. Claim: “The article mentions Meyer and the Davy Medal to show that the table was an idea ready to be found, not Mendeleev's alone.” Every set is true. Which set proves this reading, not a rival one?

    • [14] Mendeleev kept revising his textbook for decades, and its later editions used the table to organize whole chapters for students. [15] Today element 101 bears the name mendelevium, and a version of his table hangs in chemistry classrooms around the world.
    • [3] Earlier chemists had glimpsed parts of this pattern, but most of them placed each known element in the next open space, even when its properties did not fit there. [9] In Germany, Lothar Meyer had published a similar table in 1870, and in 1882 Britain's Royal Society gave its Davy Medal to both men together.
    • [7] In 1871 he went further and predicted the weight, density and chemical behavior of three missing elements, which he called eka-aluminum, eka-boron and eka-silicon. [8] Many chemists remained unconvinced, and some saw such detailed predictions as bold guesses rather than as science.
    • [13] Scandium was found in 1879 and germanium in 1886, and both matched the predictions so closely that most doubters began to take the table seriously. [14] Mendeleev kept revising his textbook for decades, and its later editions used the table to organize whole chapters for students.