Two themes that build on each other
Grade 11 Reading Worksheet - Building Confidence
Circle the best answer.
Read this first
The Tide Book (story)
[1] Odile Marchetti had kept the tide book at the Harrow Point ferry landing for thirty-one years, entering the true water height beside the figure in the harbor authority's table. [2] The columns rarely agreed, and Odile never erased the printed number but drew one line through it and wrote the correction beside it, so anyone could see both. [3] The younger deckhands found the book messy, and Teodor suggested that she copy it out clean before the spring inspection. [4] Odile answered that a clean page would show how the water ought to behave, and her book was meant to show how it had.
[5] She locked the book in the ticket drawer each night, since a record anyone could scribble in, she said, would soon be worth nothing. [6] In late October a storm tide climbed above the printed table, and the captain, uneasy about the evening crossing, asked to see the entries for three autumns. [7] The crossed-out numbers showed that the water at Harrow Point ran nearly a foot above the table whenever the wind came from the northeast. [8] He held the crossing, and while his passengers grumbled on the dock, the ferry from the next landing, which had followed the table, ran aground on the bar.
[9] Teodor asked whether he might copy a month of entries, line-throughs and all, and Odile, after a long look at the drawer, handed him the key. [10] Over the winter the other deckhands began copying pages, and within a year the harbor authority asked to see the book, which now existed in six hands. [11] Because every copy kept the crossed-out figure beside the correction, no deckhand could quietly flatter the table, and the six books could be laid side by side and trusted. [12] Odile watched the authority's clerk spread the six books on the counter, and she did not mention the drawer. [13] When the authority reprinted its table the next spring, it added a column headed “observed,” drawn from all six books. [14] On the first morning of the season, Odile wrote the day's reading, drew a line through the printed number as usual, and left the key in the drawer.
Ari names the two themes this story builds. Which pair states them as full ideas?
- A record is honest only if it shows the error beside the correction. / Official tables deserve less trust than the people who work beside the water.
- Tide tables and harbor safety. / Ferry crews and winter storms.
- A record is honest only if it shows the error beside the correction. / Knowledge helps others only once its keeper lets it go.
- A record is honest only if it shows the error beside the correction. / Odile lets the deckhands copy the book, and the authority adds a new column.
Esme is drawing the line for the theme about keeping an honest record. Which two sentences both belong on it before the lines meet?
- [4] and [9]
- [7] and [13]
- [2] and [6]
- [2] and [4]
Eleven Seconds (story)
[1] Ari had run the scoreboard at the Eastgate rec league since September, a job that paid nothing and required only that the numbers on the wall match the sheet. [2] The league's oldest rule was that the table keeper never cheered, and Ari followed it, even on the Thursday evening when Jun's team trailed by one point with eleven seconds left. [3] Jun, who had driven Ari to every Thursday game and once defended Ari's drawings to a carload of strangers, spun past two defenders and put up a shot that dropped as the horn sounded. [4] The gym erupted, and Jun's teammates lifted Jun onto their shoulders, and from up there Jun looked for the scoreboard table before looking at anything else.
[5] Ari, however, had watched Jun's heel touch the baseline during the dribble, and had seen the referee, shielded by a pillar, look the other way. [6] The official sheet in front of Ari recorded the shot as good, and no one in the building was requesting a review. [7] Ari kept still for a long minute, watching the numbers on the wall flip to a win, while Jun searched the crowd for the table and waved. [8] Then Ari remembered that Jun had once refused to copy a friend's quiz answers, and walked across the floor to tell the referee that the league's phone camera showed Jun stepping out of bounds.
[9] The referee watched the clip twice, and after a conference with the Hornets' coach the score on the wall went back to a one-point loss. [10] Jun's teammates shouted at the table until the referee waved them off, and Jun, still holding the game ball, did not look at Ari at all. [11] Ari drove home alone that night, replaying the clip, and found two messages waiting, neither from Jun. [12] On Saturday Jun appeared at Ari's door, set the ball on the step, and said nothing about the game. [13] Jun said only that the ride on Thursday would be at the usual time, and that Jun would be taking the long way. [14] The long way, as both of them understood, passed directly by the gymnasium.
Noah names the two themes this story builds. Which pair states them as full ideas?
- Honesty counts most when nobody would ever know. / Doing the right thing matters even when it goes unseen.
- Honesty counts most when nobody would ever know. / Ari tells the referee, Jun is angry, and the two make peace on Saturday.
- Honesty counts most when nobody would ever know. / A friendship that survives a hard truth is changed by it.
- Honesty counts most when nobody would ever know. / Referees cannot always be trusted to see the whole game.
Ren marks where the honesty line and the friendship line meet, so honesty becomes a way of being loyal. Which sentence is it?
- [5]
- [13]
- [7]
- [8]
The Corner Square (story)
[1] For eleven years Mrs. Bellweather had chaired the Tuesday quilting circle at the Larkin Street library, whose raffle quilts were admired for stitches so small that visitors asked whether a machine had made them. [2] She held the rule of eight stitches to the inch the way others hold a family name, and no square joined a quilt until she had examined its seams under the reading lamp. [3] In September a retired bus mechanic named Davit joined the circle, large-handed and cheerful, and sewed a first square whose stitches wandered like a path through snow. [4] The members praised the colors, and Mrs. Bellweather called the square promising, then took it home and quietly unpicked and resewed every seam before the next Tuesday. [5] She did the same with his next two squares, telling herself that a quilt is judged by its worst corner and the circle's name was in her keeping.
[6] On the fourth Tuesday Davit set a square on the table and remarked, without any sharpness, that the green corner looked different from the way he remembered sewing it. [7] Nobody answered, and Mrs. Bellweather found that she was studying the reading lamp as though the bulb needed replacing. [8] After the meeting she stayed behind with her seam ripper and the unfinished square, and Davit, warily, sat beside her. [9] She showed him how to angle the needle and how to undo a bad seam without damaging the thread, and he unpicked the green corner himself in forty minutes.
[10] His next seam was no neater, but it was his own, and he held it to the lamp, laughed, and began again. [11] By December the quilt had a border of squares in three levels of skill, and a visitor from the county fair asked which hands had made which. [12] Mrs. Bellweather answered that she could not say, and found that it was true. [13] Six of the eight members could now check a seam unprompted, and two had begun marking their own mistakes with a loop of white thread. [14] The raffle tickets sold out before the new year, and the winner, a nurse, asked only whether the quilt could be washed.
Milo names the two themes this story builds. Which pair states them as full ideas?
- High standards protect work people are proud of. / A group grows only when newcomers may make mistakes in front of it.
- High standards protect work people are proud of. / A craft group should never accept careless work.
- Quilting and library fundraisers. / Retirement and learning a craft.
- High standards protect work people are proud of. / Retirement is the best time to learn a new craft.
Pia is drawing the line for the high-standards theme. Which two sentences both belong on it before the lines meet?
- [5] and [8]
- [2] and [7]
- [3] and [8]
- [2] and [5]
Tala marks where the standards line and the newcomers line meet, so each depends on the other. Which sentence is it?
- [8]
- [5]
- [9]
- [4]
The Held Shelf (story)
[1] At the Wexford Street station the lost-property window opened at seven and closed at four, and for nineteen years Tobias Okoro had been the person behind it. [2] The regulations sent unclaimed items to auction after ninety days, but Tobias kept discovering, on the eightieth or eighty-fifth day, that a particular umbrella might still be wanted. [3] He kept these exceptions on a back shelf under a handwritten card reading “held,” and a visiting inspector once counted four hundred and six items there. [4] The inspector, a patient woman named Mrs. Quill, did not order the shelf cleared; she only asked how many of the items had been claimed after ninety days. [5] Tobias, who knew the answer, said slowly that it was perhaps three in nineteen years, and straightened a stack of forms that did not need it.
[6] Among the held items was a green wool scarf with a stitched initial, which a commuter had described by telephone eleven years before and never mentioned again. [7] Mrs. Quill suggested, writing in her notebook, that the scarf might be safer worn than kept, and Tobias said that this was not how lost property worked. [8] That night he sat with the scarf and could not recall the commuter's name, only that he had promised the voice on the telephone to keep it safe. [9] Safe, he decided, had meant something different in the first week than it did after eleven years on a shelf in the dark.
[10] In the morning he sent the scarf to the weekly sale with the rest of the shelf, keeping only the card that gave the date and place it had been found. [11] At the sale a teenager in a thin jacket paid two dollars for it and wore it onto the platform. [12] Tobias, watching from the window, wrote the sale price in his ledger and found that the page looked finished for the first time. [13] The back shelf stayed empty through the winter, though the card on it was never taken down. [14] Mrs. Quill's next report called Wexford the best-run window in the region, and Tobias, reading it aloud to nobody, left out the last line.
Zee names the two themes this story builds. Which pair states them as full ideas?
- Trains and lost umbrellas. / Inspectors and record keeping.
- Keeping faith with what is entrusted to you is a duty. / A promise to guard something should be honored for as long as it lasts.
- Keeping faith with what is entrusted to you is a duty. / Things held back from use lose the value that made them worth keeping.
- Keeping faith with what is entrusted to you is a duty. / Tobias sells the shelf, a teenager buys the scarf, and Mrs. Quill praises the window.
Ari is drawing the line for the theme about things losing their value when held back. Which two sentences both belong on it before the lines meet?
- [4] and [6]
- [7] and [11]
- [2] and [3]
- [4] and [7]
Esme marks where the keeping line and the use line meet, so each reshapes the other. Which sentence is it?
- [6]
- [7]
- [9]
- [10]