What the text leaves open, and what it settles
Grade 11 Reading Worksheet - Building Confidence
Circle the best answer.
Read this first
The Guitar on the Porch (story)
[1] On a Saturday morning in early March, Bo discovered a guitar case on the front porch, leaning against the door beside a folded card that carried no signature. [2] Inside was the old guitar that Bo had cracked in January and had given up on, now glued, sanded and strung with bright new strings. [3] The card said only, in neat block capitals, that a good instrument deserved a second chance, and so did its discouraged player.
[4] Bo's first guess was Mr. Varga, the music teacher, who had seen the cracked guitar in January and had said that a repair would take a patient person about a month. [5] Mr. Varga also kept a workbench in the band room, and Bo remembered seeing clamps and a pot of wood glue on it in February. [6] But the strings were an unusual brand, a light kind that Kira used on Kira's own guitar and had once recommended to Bo for sore fingers. [7] Kira lived two houses down the street and walked past Bo's porch every weekday morning on the way to the bus stop, usually before anyone else was awake.
[8] When Bo thanked Mr. Varga on Monday, the teacher smiled and said only that whoever had done the work had been careful. [9] When Bo asked Kira the same afternoon, Kira laughed, changed the subject to the spring concert, and offered to practice together after school. [10] Bo examined the repair that evening and found that the crack had been sealed from the inside, which meant that someone had removed the strings and reached through the sound hole. [11] The workmanship was so precise that the line of the crack could barely be distinguished under the original varnish. [12] Bo tuned the guitar, played a scale, and noticed that the neck felt noticeably straighter than it had before the January accident.
[13] On Wednesday, Bo played the guitar at the concert rehearsal, and both Mr. Varga and Kira were in the room. [14] Neither of them said a word about it, although Bo noticed that Kira kept glancing at the unfamiliar new strings throughout the song.
Ari marks one question about the text. Question: How was the crack in the guitar repaired? Does the text settle it or leave it open? Pick the choice that shows it.
- Settled: sentence 10 answers it.
- Left open: sentences 10 and 11 point different ways.
- Not addressed: sentence 2 comes closest, but it does not answer it.
- Settled: sentence 12 answers it.
Esme sorts one question about the text. Question: How much did the new strings cost? Is it settled, left open, or not addressed? Pick the choice that shows it.
- Not addressed: sentence 6 comes closest, but it does not answer it.
- Settled: sentence 6 answers it.
- Left open: sentences 5 and 6 point different ways.
- Left open: sentences 6 and 14 point different ways.
Jun fills the left-open box. Question: Who repaired the guitar? The text leaves it open. Which choice gives the two readings it allows and the clue for each?
- It could be Mr. Varga (sentence 5), or it could be Bo (sentence 10).
- It could be Mr. Varga (sentence 5), or it could be Kira (sentence 6).
- Settled as Kira: sentences 6 and 9 show it.
- It could be Mr. Varga (sentence 6), or it could be Kira (sentence 5).
The Judge's Comment (story)
[1] Esme's science fair project asked which of four kinds of soil kept water longest, and for the first two weeks the results matched almost nothing Esme had predicted. [2] Instead of hiding the problem, Esme crossed out the original hypothesis in the lab notebook, wrote a new one beside it, and ran the whole test again from the start. [3] The poster for the fair showed both hypotheses, the crossed-out one in gray and the new one in black, with an arrow between them labeled "what the data said."
[4] On the day of the fair, one judge, Dr. Amundsen, stayed at Esme's table for nearly ten minutes and asked to read every page of the notebook. [5] Ren, whose table was next to Esme's, noticed that Dr. Amundsen frowned for a long moment at the gray hypothesis before turning the page. [6] The judging sheet, which every student received in advance, listed "follows the original plan" as one of its ten scoring categories. [7] It also listed "honest reporting of results" as another category, worth exactly the same number of points.
[8] When the awards were announced, Esme received an honorable mention rather than one of the three ribbons. [9] Dr. Amundsen's comment card said only, "A bold change. I would like to see where you go next." [10] Ren read the card over Esme's shoulder and insisted that bold sounded like a compliment, but Esme was not so sure. [11] Esme pointed out that teachers sometimes wrote bold in the margin when a student had taken a risk that had not quite worked.
[12] Ren's project, which measured how quickly different metals cool, won the second-place ribbon. [13] Later that week Esme asked the science teacher whether the judges' full scores could be shared, and the teacher said that they could not. [14] Esme copied the judge's comment onto the first page of a new notebook and started planning a second experiment on the same four soils.
Bo marks one question about the text. Question: Did Dr. Amundsen mean bold as praise? Does the text settle it or leave it open? Pick the choice that shows it.
- Not addressed: sentence 8 comes closest, but it does not answer it.
- Left open: sentences 4 and 5 point different ways.
- Left open: sentences 5 and 12 point different ways.
- Settled: sentence 9 answers it.
Luz fills the left-open box. Question: Was the judge's word bold praise or a criticism? The text leaves it open. Which choice gives the two readings it allows and the clue for each?
- Settled as praise: sentences 4 and 9 show it.
- It could be praise (sentence 9), or it could be a criticism (sentence 6).
- It could be praise (sentence 6), or it could be a criticism (sentence 9).
- It could be praise (sentence 9), or a complaint that Esme hid the results (sentence 2).
Newton's Apple (article)
[1] The most famous story about Isaac Newton says that a falling apple gave him the idea of gravity, and versions of it appear in textbooks, cartoons and museum shops around the world. [2] In 1665 Cambridge University closed because of an outbreak of illness, and the twenty-two-year-old Newton spent much of the next two years at his family's farmhouse at Woolsthorpe, in Lincolnshire. [3] Newton later described those years as an unusually productive time, when he worked on mathematics, light and the motion of the moon.
[4] The apple story comes from Newton himself, who told it near the end of his life to at least two people. [5] In 1726 he dined with his friend William Stukeley, and afterward the two men drank tea in a garden under the shade of some apple trees. [6] According to Stukeley, Newton said that he had been sitting in just such a setting, in a thoughtful mood, when the fall of an apple brought the notion of gravitation into his mind. [7] John Conduitt, the husband of Newton's niece, wrote down a similar version, and the French writer Voltaire repeated the story in print in 1727. [8] Stukeley's account does not say that the apple struck Newton on the head; that detail appeared in retellings long afterward.
[9] Newton's great book on motion and gravity, the Principia, was not published until 1687, more than twenty years after the years at Woolsthorpe. [10] His notebooks from the 1660s show early work on the moon's motion, but his full theory of universal gravitation took many more years to develop. [11] Some historians therefore suspect that Newton, telling the story sixty years later, may have simplified a long struggle into a single memorable moment. [12] Others point out that the story has the same basic shape in every early account, and that an ordinary event can easily start a long line of thought.
[13] An old apple tree still grows at Woolsthorpe Manor, and its caretakers believe that it is the same tree, which fell in a storm in the early 1800s and took root again. [14] Cuttings from it have been planted at universities and science centers in several countries.
Milo marks one question about the text. Question: Did the apple story come from Newton himself? Does the text settle it or leave it open? Pick the choice that shows it.
- Not addressed: sentence 7 comes closest, but it does not answer it.
- Settled: sentence 13 answers it.
- Left open: sentences 4 and 11 point different ways.
- Settled: sentence 4 answers it.
Noah sorts one question about the text. Question: Does Stukeley's account say that the apple hit Newton on the head? Is it settled, left open, or not addressed? Pick the choice that shows it.
- Settled: sentence 7 answers it.
- Left open: sentences 6 and 8 point different ways.
- Settled: sentence 8 answers it.
- Not addressed: sentence 6 comes closest, but it does not answer it.
Pia fills the left-open box. Question: Did a falling apple really start Newton's thinking about gravity? The text leaves it open. Which choice gives the two readings it allows and the clue for each?
- It may have, as Newton said (sentence 12), or it may be a simplified memory (sentence 11).
- It may have, as Newton said (sentence 12), or Voltaire may have made it up (sentence 7).
- It may have, as Newton said (sentence 11), or it may be a simplified memory (sentence 12).
- Settled that it did: sentences 4 and 6 show it.
The Gift for the Pool (feature story about an invented town)
[1] Last spring the town of Corran learned that its public pool, closed for two summers because of a cracked filter system, would open again thanks to a gift of ninety thousand dollars. [2] The donation arrived as a check mailed to the town clerk, accompanied by a typed note requesting that the giver's identity never be made public. [3] The note also asked that the pool bring back free swimming lessons on weekday mornings, "the way it did when I learned." [4] Free morning lessons had run at the pool from 1965 until 1990, when the town cut them from the budget.
[5] Many residents guessed that the giver was Helen Marsh, a retired swim coach who had taught those lessons for twenty years and still swims laps at the high school pool every morning. [6] Marsh told the local newspaper that she was absolutely delighted by the donation but would not say one way or the other. [7] Others pointed to the Okonkwo family, whose hardware store had sponsored the swim team for decades and whose three children had all learned to swim in the morning lessons. [8] The note was mailed from Riverton, forty miles away, where the Okonkwos' oldest son now runs a business. [9] Marsh, however, also has a sister living in Riverton and visits her there on most weekends throughout the year.
[10] The town clerk confirmed that the check had cleared and that the money could be spent only on the filter system and the lessons. [11] Repairs began in March, and the pool reopened on the first Saturday of June with a line of families waiting at the gate. [12] The first week of free morning lessons filled all sixty available places within two hours of registration opening. [13] A small plaque beside the entrance now reads "From someone who learned here," with no name and no date. [14] When asked whether the town would ever try to discover who sent the donation, the mayor answered that the giver's wish would be respected completely.
Ren marks one question about the text. Question: Who sent the gift for the pool? Does the text settle it or leave it open? Pick the choice that shows it.
- Settled: sentence 5 answers it.
- Left open: sentences 5 and 11 point different ways.
- Left open: sentences 5 and 7 point different ways.
- Not addressed: sentence 2 comes closest, but it does not answer it.
Tala sorts one question about the text. Question: How many people swam on opening day? Is it settled, left open, or not addressed? Pick the choice that shows it.
- Settled: sentence 4 answers it.
- Left open: sentences 11 and 12 point different ways.
- Not addressed: sentence 11 comes closest, but it does not answer it.
- Settled: sentence 12 answers it.
