What the text leaves open, and what it settles
Grade 11 Reading Worksheet - Challenge Me
Circle the best answer.
Read this first
Two Envelopes (story)
[1] In April Jun was accepted to two summer programs that met during the same six weeks, and the reply forms for both were due on the first of May. [2] The first was a marine science program on the coast, three hundred miles from home, where students spent mornings on a research boat measuring plankton and water temperature. [3] The second was a piano program at the conservatory across town, where Jun had taken Saturday lessons since the age of eight. [4] The conservatory offered a full scholarship, while the marine program covered only half of its cost, and the family had said that the rest could be managed with extra shifts at the restaurant.
[5] Jun pinned the marine program's brochure above the desk and spent an evening reading about the research boat's sonar. [6] Jun also practiced the piano for three hours the next Saturday, longer than on any other day that spring, and asked the teacher to stay late. [7] Tala, who had known Jun since first grade, said that Jun talked about the ocean the way other people talked about a favorite band. [8] When Tala asked which program Jun would choose, Jun answered that it depended on which summer Jun wanted to remember in ten years.
[9] On the last night of April, Jun filled out both reply forms at the kitchen table and sealed each one in its own envelope. [10] Jun dropped one envelope into the mailbox at the corner before school the next morning, and the other went into the top drawer of the desk. [11] Both envelopes were plain and white, and Jun had addressed them with the same blue pen. [12] That afternoon Jun moved the marine brochure from the wall into a folder, and the piano books stayed open on the music stand.
[13] On Saturday Jun went to piano lessons as usual and played the hardest piece without stopping once. [14] In June, Tala received a postcard from Jun, and the message on the back said only, "Glad I chose."
Bo marks a question the text leaves open. Question: Which program did Jun choose? If the text added one more sentence, which one would settle it?
- Tala had applied to the same marine program the year before.
- The conservatory had offered Jun a full scholarship.
- Jun bought a new raincoat at the end of April.
- The envelope left in the desk drawer was addressed to the conservatory.
Esme fills the left-open box from across the text. Question: Which program did Jun choose? Which choice gives the two readings the text allows and the clues for each?
- It may be the marine program (sentences 5 and 7), or the piano program (sentences 6 and 13).
- It may be the marine program (sentences 5 and 7), or both programs (sentences 9 and 10).
- It may be the marine program (sentences 6 and 13), or the piano program (sentences 5 and 7).
- Settled as the piano program: sentences 12 and 13 show it.
The Second Lighthouse (story)
[1] During a summer internship at the county museum, Luz helped the conservator, Dr. Fenwick, clean a painting of Gull Harbor made in 1894 by a local artist named Clara Weiss. [2] When Dr. Fenwick photographed the canvas with an infrared camera, a second lighthouse appeared beneath the paint, sketched in charcoal about two inches to the left of the one everyone could see. [3] The hidden sketch showed the same harbor, the same rocks and the same row of fishing sheds, drawn from the same spot on the shore. [4] Painters often changed their minds partway through a picture, Dr. Fenwick explained, and traces of such changes are common in old paintings.
[5] A letter that Weiss wrote to her sister in 1893 complained that good canvas cost more than she could spare and that she sometimes painted over pictures she disliked. [6] The visible lighthouse stands where the real one stood in 1894, according to a harbor map from that year. [7] The town's records show that the lighthouse had been moved inland in 1891, after storms wore away the edge of the cliff. [8] Milo, who was volunteering at the museum's front desk, suggested that the sketch might show the lighthouse in its earlier position. [9] Dr. Fenwick measured the gap between the two towers on the canvas and found that it matched the distance recorded for the move surprisingly well.
[10] Weiss, however, was known for shifting buildings and trees in her pictures whenever it improved the balance of a scene. [11] The camera could not date the sketch, since charcoal from 1890 and charcoal from 1894 look exactly alike in an infrared image. [12] The museum decided to leave the paint untouched and to hang the infrared photograph beside the painting. [13] The label that Luz helped write says that the sketch "may record an earlier lighthouse, or an earlier idea."
[14] Visitors now stand between the two images, and Milo reports that most of them point at the sketch first.
Jun sorts three questions. 1: Does the sketch show where the lighthouse stood before 1891? 2: How did Weiss's sister answer the 1893 letter? 3: Did the museum remove the top layer of paint? Which choice labels all three correctly?
- 1 Left open, 2 Not addressed, 3 Settled.
- 1 Left open, 2 Settled, 3 Settled.
- 1 Left open, 2 Not addressed, 3 Not addressed.
- 1 Settled, 2 Not addressed, 3 Settled.
Kira marks a question the text leaves open. Question: Does the sketch show where the lighthouse stood before 1891? If the text added one more sentence, which one would settle it?
- Weiss's sister kept the letters she received from Weiss.
- The museum chose to leave the top layer of paint untouched.
- Weiss had often visited Gull Harbor as a child.
- Weiss's notebook says that she first drew the tower where it had stood before the move.
Noah fills the left-open box from across the text. Question: What does the hidden lighthouse record? Which choice gives the two readings the text allows and the clues for each?
- It may record the tower before its move (sentences 7 and 9), or an idea Weiss changed for balance (sentences 4 and 10).
- It may record the tower before its move (sentences 7 and 9), or a date the camera read in the charcoal (sentences 2 and 11).
- It may record the tower before its move (sentences 4 and 10), or an idea Weiss changed for balance (sentences 7 and 9).
- Settled as the old position: sentences 8 and 9 show it.
The Gears from the Shipwreck (article)
[1] In 1900 sponge divers sheltering from a storm near the Greek island of Antikythera found the wreck of an ancient ship lying on the seabed more than forty meters down. [2] Over the next year they raised bronze and marble statues, pottery and glassware, and in 1902 an archaeologist named Valerios Stais noticed a gear wheel in a lump of corroded bronze. [3] The lump turned out to be the remains of a geared device about the size of a shoebox, now broken into dozens of fragments. [4] The ship itself sank in the first century BCE, so the device is more than two thousand years old.
[5] For decades its purpose was unclear, until the historian of science Derek de Solla Price studied radiographs of the fragments in the 1970s and argued that it modeled the movements of the sky. [6] In 2005 a research team scanned the fragments with powerful X-ray machines and found thousands of tiny letters inscribed on the surfaces, many of them hidden inside the corroded metal. [7] The inscriptions, together with about thirty surviving gears, show that turning a handle moved pointers for the sun and moon, displayed the moon's phase with a small rotating ball, and predicted eclipses. [8] One dial even tracked the four-year cycle of athletic games, including the Olympic Games.
[9] The inscriptions also mention several planets by name. [10] No gears for the planets have survived, however, and the front of the device is badly damaged. [11] Some researchers have built models in which lost gear trains moved planetary pointers on the front, arguing that the inscriptions would make little sense otherwise. [12] Others caution that an inscription can explain what a device's owner should know without the device itself showing it.
[13] No maker's name appears in the surviving text, and scholars have suggested several possible workshops, including one on the island of Rhodes. [14] The fragments are kept today at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. [15] Nothing with gearing this complex is known again until the astronomical clocks of medieval Europe, more than a thousand years later.
Milo marks a question the text leaves open. Question: Did the device show the planets? If the text added one more sentence, which one would settle it?
- A fragment named the workshop on Rhodes that built the device.
- A newly found fragment held gears that drove pointers marked with the planets' names.
- The device predicted eclipses of the sun and the moon.
- Other ancient writers described machines that showed the planets.
Pia fills the left-open box from across the text. Question: Did the device show the planets? Which choice gives the two readings the text allows and the clues for each?
- It may have shown them (sentences 9 and 11), or only described them (sentences 10 and 12).
- It may have shown them (sentences 9 and 11), or shown them with gears that still survive (sentences 7 and 14).
- Settled that it showed them: sentences 7 and 9 show it.
- It may have shown them (sentences 10 and 12), or only described them (sentences 9 and 11).
The Island on the 1894 Map (feature story about an invented county)
[1] A county map printed in 1894 shows a small, oval island, labeled Heron Key, approximately a mile off the southern shore of Wendell Bay. [2] No later map shows the island, and the county's survey of 1910 records only open water at that spot, about four meters deep. [3] The 1894 map was drawn by Josiah Pratt, a surveyor who operated a small mapmaking business and sold printed copies to shipping companies and harbor officials.
[4] Some local historians believe that Heron Key was a real sandbar island that storms washed away between 1894 and 1910. [5] They point to an 1879 harbor report, written by a different surveyor, which warns ships about "a low sandy island with grass" in roughly the same place. [6] Others suspect that Pratt invented the island, as some mapmakers of the period did, so that he could prove it if a rival copied his work. [7] They note that a rival company's map of 1897 shows Heron Key in exactly the same shape and place, and that Pratt took that company to court in 1898. [8] The court papers survive, but they mention only a misspelled street name as evidence, not the island.
[9] Pratt's own field notebooks, kept at the county library, describe nearly every point on the 1894 map, but the pages covering the southern shore are missing. [10] Divers who visited the spot in 2019 found a long ridge of sand on the bottom, which could be the remains of an island or simply a bar that was always underwater. [11] The name Heron Key appears nowhere else in the county's surviving records, including its property lists and its tax registers.
[12] The county historical society currently sells reprints of the 1894 map, with Heron Key circled in red. [13] Its gift shop also sells a small blue mug printed with the island's outline and the words "Find Heron Key." [14] When asked which side is correct, the society's director replied that the map remains more interesting as long as nobody knows.
Ren sorts three questions. 1: Was Heron Key a real island? 2: What evidence did Pratt's court case rely on? 3: How did Pratt's court case end? Which choice labels all three correctly?
- 1 Left open, 2 Left open, 3 Not addressed.
- 1 Left open, 2 Settled, 3 Not addressed.
- 1 Settled, 2 Settled, 3 Not addressed.
- 1 Left open, 2 Settled, 3 Left open.
Tala marks a question the text leaves open. Question: Was Heron Key a real island? If the text added one more sentence, which one would settle it?
- The court papers named the judge who heard Pratt's case.
- A photograph from 1895 showed grass growing on a sandy island at that spot.
- Several other mapmakers of the 1890s were known to add invented places.
- The 1910 survey recorded open water at that spot.
Zee fills the left-open box from across the text. Question: Was Heron Key a real island? Which choice gives the two readings the text allows and the clues for each?
- It may have been real and washed away (sentences 5 and 10), or a trap for copiers (sentences 6 and 7).
- It may have been real and washed away (sentences 6 and 7), or a trap for copiers (sentences 5 and 10).
- It may have been real and washed away (sentences 5 and 10), or real and still above water today (sentences 1 and 12).
- Settled as a trap for copiers: sentences 7 and 8 show it.