Summarize a complex text fairly
Grade 11 Reading Worksheet - Challenge Me
Circle the best answer.
Read this first
The Missing Answers (story)
[1] The Halvorsen town council gave its youth advisory board a single task that spring: recommend whether a small park grant should repaint the old band shell or pave a walking loop around the pond. [2] Pia, who chaired the board, designed an online survey, and within two weeks four hundred residents had answered, with nearly two thirds choosing the band shell. [3] Pia considered the matter settled, arguing that a recommendation backed by a clear majority was the fairest one a board could make. [4] Ren, however, noticed that almost every answer had come from the streets near the high school, and that the neighborhood beside the pond, where many older residents lived, had sent in hardly any.
[5] Pia agreed to wait one week, though only after pointing out that the survey had been open to everyone. [6] Ren and two other board members spent that week at the senior center and the laundromat by the pond, carrying paper copies of the same survey. [7] Many people they met had never seen the online version, and several said they walked the pond every morning on a dirt path that turned to mud in the rain. [8] By the end of the week, the paper survey had added one hundred and sixty answers, and almost all of them chose the walking loop.
[9] When the two sets of answers were combined, the band shell and the path were nearly tied, and the board's meeting ran an hour late. [10] Pia admitted that the first count had measured who saw the survey as much as what people wanted. [11] The board finally recommended paving the loop this year and repainting the band shell with next year's grant, and attached both counts to its report so the council could see how the numbers had changed. [12] The council accepted the plan and asked the board to use paper and online surveys together from then on. [13] Pia still believed that a majority should decide, but now insisted that a board first check who was missing from the majority it had counted. [14] Ren pinned the two charts side by side on the board's bulletin board as a reminder of the week the count changed.
Ari wants the whole text in one sentence, with both idea lines and how one changed the other. Which sentence does that?
- Pia trusted the clear majority from an online survey of four hundred residents, and Ren also carried paper copies of the survey to residents near the pond.
- Pia trusted the online survey's clear majority until Ren's paper survey reached residents the first count had missed, nearly tying the result and leading the board to check who was missing before trusting a majority.
- Ren's paper survey reached older residents near the pond, and the board recommended paving the walking loop this year and repainting the band shell next year.
- Pia's careless online survey ignored the town's older residents until Ren's admirable legwork rescued a fair result for the town of Halvorsen.
The Missing Answers (story)
[1] The Halvorsen town council gave its youth advisory board a single task that spring: recommend whether a small park grant should repaint the old band shell or pave a walking loop around the pond. [2] Pia, who chaired the board, designed an online survey, and within two weeks four hundred residents had answered, with nearly two thirds choosing the band shell. [3] Pia considered the matter settled, arguing that a recommendation backed by a clear majority was the fairest one a board could make. [4] Ren, however, noticed that almost every answer had come from the streets near the high school, and that the neighborhood beside the pond, where many older residents lived, had sent in hardly any.
[5] Pia agreed to wait one week, though only after pointing out that the survey had been open to everyone. [6] Ren and two other board members spent that week at the senior center and the laundromat by the pond, carrying paper copies of the same survey. [7] Many people they met had never seen the online version, and several said they walked the pond every morning on a dirt path that turned to mud in the rain. [8] By the end of the week, the paper survey had added one hundred and sixty answers, and almost all of them chose the walking loop.
[9] When the two sets of answers were combined, the band shell and the path were nearly tied, and the board's meeting ran an hour late. [10] Pia admitted that the first count had measured who saw the survey as much as what people wanted. [11] The board finally recommended paving the loop this year and repainting the band shell with next year's grant, and attached both counts to its report so the council could see how the numbers had changed. [12] The council accepted the plan and asked the board to use paper and online surveys together from then on. [13] Pia still believed that a majority should decide, but now insisted that a board first check who was missing from the majority it had counted. [14] Ren pinned the two charts side by side on the board's bulletin board as a reminder of the week the count changed. Draft summary: (1) Pia's online survey showed nearly two thirds of residents favoring the band shell. (2) Because the council asked for paper surveys, Ren then took them to the pond.
Bo's draft below drops an idea and gets a cause backward. Which revision fixes both flaws?
- Pia's online survey showed nearly two thirds favoring the band shell. Ren chose to take paper surveys to the pond, and afterward the council asked the board to use both kinds of survey.
- Pia's online survey showed nearly two thirds favoring the band shell. Ren chose to take paper surveys to the pond, the answers nearly tied the count, and Pia saw who the first count had missed.
- Pia's online survey showed nearly two thirds favoring the band shell. Ren wisely chose to take paper surveys to the pond, the answers nearly tied the count, and a humbled Pia saw who had been missed.
- Pia's online survey showed nearly two thirds favoring the band shell. Because the council asked for paper surveys, Ren took them to the pond, the count nearly tied, and Pia saw who the first count had missed.
The Missing Answers (story)
[1] The Halvorsen town council gave its youth advisory board a single task that spring: recommend whether a small park grant should repaint the old band shell or pave a walking loop around the pond. [2] Pia, who chaired the board, designed an online survey, and within two weeks four hundred residents had answered, with nearly two thirds choosing the band shell. [3] Pia considered the matter settled, arguing that a recommendation backed by a clear majority was the fairest one a board could make. [4] Ren, however, noticed that almost every answer had come from the streets near the high school, and that the neighborhood beside the pond, where many older residents lived, had sent in hardly any.
[5] Pia agreed to wait one week, though only after pointing out that the survey had been open to everyone. [6] Ren and two other board members spent that week at the senior center and the laundromat by the pond, carrying paper copies of the same survey. [7] Many people they met had never seen the online version, and several said they walked the pond every morning on a dirt path that turned to mud in the rain. [8] By the end of the week, the paper survey had added one hundred and sixty answers, and almost all of them chose the walking loop.
[9] When the two sets of answers were combined, the band shell and the path were nearly tied, and the board's meeting ran an hour late. [10] Pia admitted that the first count had measured who saw the survey as much as what people wanted. [11] The board finally recommended paving the loop this year and repainting the band shell with next year's grant, and attached both counts to its report so the council could see how the numbers had changed. [12] The council accepted the plan and asked the board to use paper and online surveys together from then on. [13] Pia still believed that a majority should decide, but now insisted that a board first check who was missing from the majority it had counted. [14] Ren pinned the two charts side by side on the board's bulletin board as a reminder of the week the count changed. Summary A: Pia trusted the online majority until Ren's paper survey added residents near the pond and nearly tied the count. The board then recommended both projects, one each year, and began checking who a count had missed. Summary B: After the meeting ran late and the council demanded a fairer method, Ren reluctantly went to the pond with paper copies of the survey, which nearly tied the count. Pia's rather stubborn faith in a single online majority was finally shaken, and the board, at last showing good sense, recommended paving the loop first.
Esme compares the two classmates' summaries shown below the text. Which judgment of them is accurate?
- Summary A is fairer just because summary B adds judgments; apart from those words, the two give the same causes for each event.
- Summary A is fairer just because summary B reverses a cause; apart from that, both are worded without judgment.
- Summary B is fairer, because it gives more of the story's details, such as the late meeting and the loop paved first.
- Summary A is fairer, because summary B adds judgments and makes the council's demand the cause of Ren's trip to the pond.
Slow Type (story)
[1] When Mr. Brannigan announced that the letterpress shop would close at the end of the summer, Tala and Zee, who had worked there for two summers, asked for one season to keep it open. [2] Their plan was to make the shop faster, so they took orders online, promised posters in two days instead of a week, and ran the old press for longer hours than it had ever run. [3] Within a month the shop had more orders than ever, but rushed jobs came back with smudged letters and crooked lines, and several customers asked for refunds. [4] Mr. Brannigan watched without comment, though he spent his evenings oiling a press that was being worked harder than it had been built for.
[5] One afternoon a teacher who had ordered invitations came in to complain, and Mr. Brannigan, instead of apologizing at the counter, invited her into the back to set one line of type herself. [6] She spent forty minutes picking metal letters from the case, spacing the lines with thin metal strips and pulling a single print, and she left without asking for a refund. [7] The next week she returned with four friends and asked whether they could pay to do the same thing. [8] Tala and Zee realized that the slowness they had been resisting was exactly what these visitors wanted.
[9] For the rest of the summer they cut rush orders back to a few each week and opened the shop two evenings a week for workshops in setting type by hand. [10] The workshops filled within days, and the money from them covered more of the shop's costs than the rush orders had, without straining the press. [11] The other print jobs, now given a full week, came out clean again, and the complaints stopped. [12] At the end of August, Mr. Brannigan agreed to keep the shop open another year, as long as Tala and Zee taught the workshops too. [13] Zee pointed out that the shop had been saved by changing almost everything about how it worked except the press itself. [14] Tala answered that the change had worked only because it protected the one thing in the shop that could not be hurried.
Jun wants the whole text in one sentence, with both idea lines and how one changed the other. Which sentence does that?
- Tala and Zee first tried to save the letterpress shop by making it faster, but when a customer enjoyed setting type by hand, they built the business around the slow press, and it stayed open.
- Tala and Zee tried to save the letterpress shop by taking orders online and promising posters in two days, but the rushed jobs came back smudged and crooked.
- Tala and Zee tried to make the letterpress shop faster to keep it open, and customers also enjoyed evening workshops in setting type by hand.
- Because the evening workshops were filling up, Tala and Zee cut back the rush orders, and the other print jobs came out clean again.
Slow Type (story)
[1] When Mr. Brannigan announced that the letterpress shop would close at the end of the summer, Tala and Zee, who had worked there for two summers, asked for one season to keep it open. [2] Their plan was to make the shop faster, so they took orders online, promised posters in two days instead of a week, and ran the old press for longer hours than it had ever run. [3] Within a month the shop had more orders than ever, but rushed jobs came back with smudged letters and crooked lines, and several customers asked for refunds. [4] Mr. Brannigan watched without comment, though he spent his evenings oiling a press that was being worked harder than it had been built for.
[5] One afternoon a teacher who had ordered invitations came in to complain, and Mr. Brannigan, instead of apologizing at the counter, invited her into the back to set one line of type herself. [6] She spent forty minutes picking metal letters from the case, spacing the lines with thin metal strips and pulling a single print, and she left without asking for a refund. [7] The next week she returned with four friends and asked whether they could pay to do the same thing. [8] Tala and Zee realized that the slowness they had been resisting was exactly what these visitors wanted.
[9] For the rest of the summer they cut rush orders back to a few each week and opened the shop two evenings a week for workshops in setting type by hand. [10] The workshops filled within days, and the money from them covered more of the shop's costs than the rush orders had, without straining the press. [11] The other print jobs, now given a full week, came out clean again, and the complaints stopped. [12] At the end of August, Mr. Brannigan agreed to keep the shop open another year, as long as Tala and Zee taught the workshops too. [13] Zee pointed out that the shop had been saved by changing almost everything about how it worked except the press itself. [14] Tala answered that the change had worked only because it protected the one thing in the shop that could not be hurried. Summary A: Tala and Zee tried to save the letterpress shop by making it faster, but rushed jobs smudged. After a customer enjoyed setting type by hand, they ran workshops instead, and the shop stayed open. Summary B: Tala and Zee's reckless plan to make the shop faster soon produced smudged posters and crooked lines. Because Mr. Brannigan had already decided to keep the shop open, the two sensibly turned to running evening workshops in setting type by hand, which filled within days.
Luz compares the two classmates' summaries shown below the text. Which judgment of them is accurate?
- Both summaries are equally fair, since each keeps the faster plan, the smudged jobs and the workshops.
- Summary A is fairer, but just for its plainer words; the two summaries agree about why the workshops began.
- Summary A is fairer, because summary B adds judgments and claims the workshops began because the shop was already being kept open.
- Summary B is fairer, because it gives more of the story's details, such as the crooked lines and the evening workshops in its longer account.
The Day Noon Moved (article)
[1] Until the 1880s, most American towns set their clocks by the sun, calling it noon when the sun stood highest over that particular town. [2] Because noon arrives about four minutes later for every degree of longitude a place lies to the west, noon in one town came a few minutes before or after noon in the next. [3] For a farmer or a shopkeeper, this local time worked well enough, since daily life rarely required knowing the time a hundred miles away.
[4] The railroads, however, ran trains across hundreds of miles, and each company kept its own time, often the local time of its headquarters or of a major city on its line. [5] By the early 1880s, the railroads of the United States were using dozens of different times, and a station serving several lines might show several clocks with different hours. [6] Timetables confused passengers, and different times on the same track made errors in scheduling more likely. [7] On November 18, 1883, the railroads of the United States and Canada adopted a system of standard time zones, each roughly fifteen degrees of longitude wide, with every clock in a zone set to the same hour. [8] The plan, organized largely by William F. Allen, a railroad official who edited a guide to train schedules, divided the United States into four zones. [9] In some cities the clocks were set back a few minutes at noon, so that noon came twice, and the date became known as the day of two noons.
[10] The change was made by the railroads alone, without any law, and some towns at first refused to follow it, keeping the sun's time for local business. [11] Over the following years, however, schools, businesses and town governments gradually adopted railroad time, because daily life increasingly depended on the trains. [12] Congress did not make standard time the law of the nation until 1918, thirty-five years after the railroads had put it into use. [13] In the end, a system built for the convenience of one industry became the time by which everyone lived. [14] The sun still reaches its highest point at a different moment in each town, but almost no one sets a watch by it.
Milo wants the whole text in one sentence, with both idea lines and how one changed the other. Which sentence does that?
- On November 18, 1883, the railroads of the United States and Canada adopted standard time zones, which Congress made the law of the nation in 1918.
- Because Congress made standard time the law in 1918, the railroads and then the towns gave up local sun time for time zones.
- Towns once clung to a quaint and confusing sun time until the sensible railroads gave the country the time zones it badly needed in 1883.
- American towns once kept their own sun time, but the railroads' need for shared schedules led them to adopt time zones in 1883, which towns gradually followed long before the 1918 law.
The Day Noon Moved (article)
[1] Until the 1880s, most American towns set their clocks by the sun, calling it noon when the sun stood highest over that particular town. [2] Because noon arrives about four minutes later for every degree of longitude a place lies to the west, noon in one town came a few minutes before or after noon in the next. [3] For a farmer or a shopkeeper, this local time worked well enough, since daily life rarely required knowing the time a hundred miles away.
[4] The railroads, however, ran trains across hundreds of miles, and each company kept its own time, often the local time of its headquarters or of a major city on its line. [5] By the early 1880s, the railroads of the United States were using dozens of different times, and a station serving several lines might show several clocks with different hours. [6] Timetables confused passengers, and different times on the same track made errors in scheduling more likely. [7] On November 18, 1883, the railroads of the United States and Canada adopted a system of standard time zones, each roughly fifteen degrees of longitude wide, with every clock in a zone set to the same hour. [8] The plan, organized largely by William F. Allen, a railroad official who edited a guide to train schedules, divided the United States into four zones. [9] In some cities the clocks were set back a few minutes at noon, so that noon came twice, and the date became known as the day of two noons.
[10] The change was made by the railroads alone, without any law, and some towns at first refused to follow it, keeping the sun's time for local business. [11] Over the following years, however, schools, businesses and town governments gradually adopted railroad time, because daily life increasingly depended on the trains. [12] Congress did not make standard time the law of the nation until 1918, thirty-five years after the railroads had put it into use. [13] In the end, a system built for the convenience of one industry became the time by which everyone lived. [14] The sun still reaches its highest point at a different moment in each town, but almost no one sets a watch by it. Summary A: Towns once kept their own sun time, which suited local life. The railroads, needing shared schedules, adopted time zones in 1883, and towns gradually followed, long before the 1918 law. Summary B: Towns once kept their own sun time, a charming but hopelessly old-fashioned habit. After Congress passed its standard time law, the railroads finally organized four time zones, and schools, businesses and town governments across the country gradually followed their lead.
Pia compares the two classmates' summaries shown below the text. Which judgment of them is accurate?
- Summary A is fairer, because summary B adds judgments and makes the law the cause of the railroads' zones.
- Both summaries are equally fair, since each keeps the sun time, the railroads' zones and the towns that followed.
- Summary A is fairer just because summary B puts the law first; otherwise both describe the old sun time neutrally.
- Summary B is fairer, because it gives more of the article's details, such as the four zones and the schools and businesses.
A Measure for Everyone (article)
[1] In 1791, the French Academy of Sciences proposed a new unit of length, the meter, defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator, measured along the line of longitude through Paris. [2] Its supporters wanted a measure that belonged to no king or region but was taken from the earth itself, so that it could serve all people and all times. [3] To find the length, two astronomers, Jean-Baptiste Delambre and Pierre Méchain, set out in 1792 to survey the stretch of that line between Dunkirk in the north and Barcelona in the south. [4] Using chains of triangles sighted from hilltops and tall buildings, they spent more than six years measuring angles and distances across rough country. [5] Their results were used in 1799 to fix the length of a platinum bar, which became the official meter.
[6] The survey, however, held a secret. [7] Near Barcelona, Méchain had made two sets of measurements of latitude that disagreed slightly, and, unable to explain the difference, he kept it hidden and worried over it for years. [8] Delambre later found the discrepancy in Méchain's notebooks. [9] A larger problem was the earth itself, which later surveys showed is not a perfectly regular shape, so that no single stretch of it could give an exact fraction of the whole. [10] Modern measurements show that the bar of 1799 was slightly too short, by about a fifth of a millimeter, compared with the length the definition called for.
[11] Yet the error made almost no difference to the meter's success, because what mattered in practice was that everyone measured with the same bar. [12] Through the 1800s, more and more countries adopted the meter, and in 1875 seventeen nations, including the United States, signed the Treaty of the Meter. [13] In 1983, scientists redefined the meter as the distance light travels in a vacuum in a tiny, fixed fraction of a second, so that any well-equipped laboratory can reproduce it. [14] The dream of a measure for everyone came true, but not quite as its founders imagined: it rested on agreement among people rather than on a perfect measurement of the earth.
Ren wants the whole text in one sentence, with both idea lines and how one changed the other. Which sentence does that?
- The meter, a noble but naive dream of perfection, rested on a flawed survey and was rescued by the good sense of the nations that adopted it.
- The meter was meant to be a perfect measure taken from the earth, but the survey behind it was slightly flawed, and it succeeded anyway because people agreed to measure with the same bar.
- The meter was defined in 1791 as a fraction of the distance from the pole to the equator, and the survey behind it also held a small hidden error.
- Because seventeen nations had adopted the meter by 1875, two astronomers set out to survey the line from Dunkirk to Barcelona to measure it.
A Measure for Everyone (article)
[1] In 1791, the French Academy of Sciences proposed a new unit of length, the meter, defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator, measured along the line of longitude through Paris. [2] Its supporters wanted a measure that belonged to no king or region but was taken from the earth itself, so that it could serve all people and all times. [3] To find the length, two astronomers, Jean-Baptiste Delambre and Pierre Méchain, set out in 1792 to survey the stretch of that line between Dunkirk in the north and Barcelona in the south. [4] Using chains of triangles sighted from hilltops and tall buildings, they spent more than six years measuring angles and distances across rough country. [5] Their results were used in 1799 to fix the length of a platinum bar, which became the official meter.
[6] The survey, however, held a secret. [7] Near Barcelona, Méchain had made two sets of measurements of latitude that disagreed slightly, and, unable to explain the difference, he kept it hidden and worried over it for years. [8] Delambre later found the discrepancy in Méchain's notebooks. [9] A larger problem was the earth itself, which later surveys showed is not a perfectly regular shape, so that no single stretch of it could give an exact fraction of the whole. [10] Modern measurements show that the bar of 1799 was slightly too short, by about a fifth of a millimeter, compared with the length the definition called for.
[11] Yet the error made almost no difference to the meter's success, because what mattered in practice was that everyone measured with the same bar. [12] Through the 1800s, more and more countries adopted the meter, and in 1875 seventeen nations, including the United States, signed the Treaty of the Meter. [13] In 1983, scientists redefined the meter as the distance light travels in a vacuum in a tiny, fixed fraction of a second, so that any well-equipped laboratory can reproduce it. [14] The dream of a measure for everyone came true, but not quite as its founders imagined: it rested on agreement among people rather than on a perfect measurement of the earth. Draft summary: (1) In 1791, French scientists defined the meter as a fraction of the distance from the pole to the equator. (2) Because Delambre found the error in Méchain's notebooks, the meter was fixed as a platinum bar in 1799.
Tala's draft below drops an idea and gets a cause backward. Which revision fixes both flaws?
- In 1791, French scientists defined the meter as a fraction of the distance from the pole to the equator, and a survey fixed it in 1799. The survey held a small error, but the meter spread because everyone used the same bar.
- A survey from Dunkirk to Barcelona fixed the meter as a platinum bar in 1799, and Delambre later found an error in Méchain's notebooks.
- In 1791, French scientists defined the meter as a fraction of the distance from the pole to the equator. A survey fixed it as a platinum bar in 1799, and Delambre later found an error in Méchain's notebooks.
- In 1791, French scientists boldly defined the meter as a fraction of the distance from the pole to the equator, and a survey fixed it in 1799. The survey held a small error, but the world sensibly agreed to use the same bar.
A Measure for Everyone (article)
[1] In 1791, the French Academy of Sciences proposed a new unit of length, the meter, defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator, measured along the line of longitude through Paris. [2] Its supporters wanted a measure that belonged to no king or region but was taken from the earth itself, so that it could serve all people and all times. [3] To find the length, two astronomers, Jean-Baptiste Delambre and Pierre Méchain, set out in 1792 to survey the stretch of that line between Dunkirk in the north and Barcelona in the south. [4] Using chains of triangles sighted from hilltops and tall buildings, they spent more than six years measuring angles and distances across rough country. [5] Their results were used in 1799 to fix the length of a platinum bar, which became the official meter.
[6] The survey, however, held a secret. [7] Near Barcelona, Méchain had made two sets of measurements of latitude that disagreed slightly, and, unable to explain the difference, he kept it hidden and worried over it for years. [8] Delambre later found the discrepancy in Méchain's notebooks. [9] A larger problem was the earth itself, which later surveys showed is not a perfectly regular shape, so that no single stretch of it could give an exact fraction of the whole. [10] Modern measurements show that the bar of 1799 was slightly too short, by about a fifth of a millimeter, compared with the length the definition called for.
[11] Yet the error made almost no difference to the meter's success, because what mattered in practice was that everyone measured with the same bar. [12] Through the 1800s, more and more countries adopted the meter, and in 1875 seventeen nations, including the United States, signed the Treaty of the Meter. [13] In 1983, scientists redefined the meter as the distance light travels in a vacuum in a tiny, fixed fraction of a second, so that any well-equipped laboratory can reproduce it. [14] The dream of a measure for everyone came true, but not quite as its founders imagined: it rested on agreement among people rather than on a perfect measurement of the earth. Summary A: Seventeen nations had agreed to the meter, so French scientists set out to measure it from the earth itself. Sadly, their survey was embarrassingly flawed, yet the bar still served everyone. Summary B: French scientists set out to take a perfect measure from the earth, but their survey was slightly flawed. The meter spread anyway, because everyone measured with the same bar.
Zee compares the two classmates' summaries shown below the text. Which judgment of them is accurate?
- Summary B is fairer, because summary A adds judgments and makes the nations' agreement the cause of the survey.
- Summary B is fairer, but just because summary A adds judgments; both summaries give the same order of cause.
- Both summaries are equally fair, since each keeps the survey, its flaw and the bar the nations shared.
- Summary B is fairer, but just because summary A gets the cause backward; both are free of the summarizer's judgments.