How an article builds and sharpens its main idea
Grade 9 Reading Worksheet - Building Confidence
Circle the best answer.
Read this first
Still Open (essay)
[1] Every few years, someone announces that the public library is finished. [2] The case is easy to make: a phone now holds more books than any branch building, and most reference questions take seconds to type. [3] If a library exists to store paper, then a search engine looks like its replacement.
[4] The numbers seem to agree. [5] Circulation of printed books has slipped in many towns, and some branches have removed whole rows of shelves to make space. [6] Budget committees, reading those figures, wonder aloud why a community should keep paying for a warehouse of volumes that few people borrow.
[7] But a budget committee counts what leaves the building, and the interesting question about a library is who comes in. [8] On a weekday afternoon, a retired machinist may be borrowing a laptop, a teenager may be finishing homework because home has no internet, and a newcomer may be sitting in a language class beside the picture books. [9] The building itself dates from the 1920s, with a high ceiling and tall windows in the upstairs reading room. [10] Few of these visitors came for a title. [11] They came for a room that was warm, free and open to anyone, which is harder to find than information.
[12] Seen this way, a branch that lends seeds, cake pans and telescopes is not drifting from its purpose. [13] The paper was merely the first thing a community knew how to share. [14] A telescope that no single household could justify buying belongs on a library's shelves for the same reason that a rare atlas once did.
Ari is building the gist ladder for this essay. Which statement gives the central idea as the essay finally develops it?
- A library's lasting purpose is to let a community share what no household could manage alone, so lending telescopes continues that purpose.
- A library that mainly stores paper has been made unnecessary by phones and search engines, and the shelves that branches have removed seem to show it.
- Some branches now lend seeds, cake pans and telescopes to the people who live near them, as sentence 12 reports.
- Library visitors come for a warm, free and open room more than for a title on a shelf, and that kind of room is hard to find elsewhere.
Bo marks the step where the central idea is refined. In which paragraph does the essay first turn against the critics and put a more exact idea in their place?
- Paragraph 4, where branches that lend seeds, cake pans and telescopes are compared with a rare old atlas.
- Paragraph 1, where the writer reports that a phone and a search engine look like replacements for a library.
- Paragraph 3, where the writer stops counting what leaves the building and asks who comes in and why.
- Paragraph 2, where falling book loans and removed shelves are used to back up the critics' case.
The gist of paragraph 3 is that library visitors come for a place, not a product. Which sentence backs that gist with a specific fact instead of repeating it?
- [9] The building itself dates from the 1920s, with a high ceiling and tall windows in the upstairs reading room.
- [11] They came for a room that was warm, free and open to anyone, which is harder to find than information.
- [5] Circulation of printed books has slipped in many towns, and some branches have removed whole rows of shelves to make space.
- [8] On a weekday afternoon, a retired machinist may be borrowing a laptop, a teenager may be finishing homework because home has no internet, and a newcomer may be sitting in a language class beside the picture books.
The Long Road to Nothing (history)
[1] A child learns to write zero before learning to subtract, so it is easy to forget that zero was once a problem. [2] The Greeks, who were superb at geometry, had no symbol for it, and the Romans wrote their numbers with no place for it to stand.
[3] Some peoples did need a mark for an empty place. [4] Around 300 BCE, Babylonian scribes who wrote numbers by place value began pressing two small wedges into clay to show that a column was empty, so that 61 and 3,601 could be told apart. [5] Clay tablets from that time survive in large numbers, because baked clay outlasts papyrus or wood. [6] The wedges worked like a blank space on a page, however, and a scribe never added them, subtracted them or counted with them. [7] They told the reader where a number had a gap; they did not stand for "nothing."
[8] The step that mattered came in India. [9] In 628 CE, the astronomer Brahmagupta wrote rules that treated zero as a number: a number added to zero stays the same, and a number minus itself is zero. [10] He stumbled over dividing by zero, a puzzle that mathematicians would not settle for centuries, but he had asked the question that a placeholder never raised, which is what zero does when it is used in a calculation.
[11] Indian numerals reached Europe through Arabic books, and the Italian scholar Leonardo of Pisa, known as Fibonacci, explained them to merchants in a book of 1202. [12] A system that could add and multiply on paper beat sliding beads on a counting board, and ledgers slowly changed over.
Jun is building the gist ladder for this history. Which statement gives the central idea as the history finally develops it?
- Zero was invented when Babylonian scribes pressed two wedges into clay to mark an empty column inside a written number.
- Fibonacci's book of 1202 explained Indian numerals to merchants in Europe, and ledgers slowly changed over to the new system.
- In 628 CE, Brahmagupta wrote that a number minus itself is zero and that a number added to zero stays the same.
- The breakthrough was treating nothing as a number that could be added and subtracted, not merely marking an empty place.
Kira marks the step where the central idea is refined. In which paragraph does zero first move from a mark in a column to something more?
- Paragraph 1, where Greek and Roman numbers are shown to have no symbol or place for zero.
- Paragraph 3, where Brahmagupta's rules let zero take part in addition and subtraction.
- Paragraph 4, where Fibonacci's book carries Indian numerals to merchants and ledgers slowly change over.
- Paragraph 2, where Babylonian scribes use two wedges so that 61 and 3,601 are not confused.
The gist of paragraph 2 is that the Babylonian mark showed an empty place so that two numbers could be told apart. Which sentence backs that gist with a specific fact?
- [9] In 628 CE, the astronomer Brahmagupta wrote rules that treated zero as a number: a number added to zero stays the same, and a number minus itself is zero.
- [5] Clay tablets from that time survive in large numbers, because baked clay outlasts papyrus or wood.
- [4] Around 300 BCE, Babylonian scribes who wrote numbers by place value began pressing two small wedges into clay to show that a column was empty, so that 61 and 3,601 could be told apart.
- [7] They told the reader where a number had a gap; they did not stand for "nothing."
A Race Older Than Its Legend (history)
[1] Most people who run a marathon have heard the story: a messenger ran from the battlefield at Marathon to Athens in 490 BCE, announced a victory, and collapsed. [2] The tale is so familiar that the race feels as old as the Olympics themselves.
[3] The ancient sources tell it differently. [4] Herodotus, writing about half a century after the battle, mentions a runner named Pheidippides who was sent from Athens to Sparta to ask for help, a trip of roughly 150 miles over rough ground. [5] He says nothing about a run to Athens. [6] The famous version, with the announcement and the collapse, appears in writers who lived centuries later, like a rumor that improves with each telling.
[7] The race itself is younger still. [8] The French scholar Michel Bréal proposed a long run for the first modern Olympics in 1896, and the organizers in Athens, wanting a link with the past, laid out a course from the village of Marathon to the stadium. [9] A Greek water carrier named Spyridon Louis won it. [10] No fixed length existed after that. [11] At the 1908 London Games, officials began the course at Windsor Castle and ended it in front of the royal box, which produced a distance of 26 miles and 385 yards, and that odd number was adopted as the standard in 1921.
[12] None of this spoils the marathon for those who run it. [13] It shows how much of an ancient tradition can be made of a few old facts, a good story and a decision about where to put a finish line.
Milo is building the gist ladder for this history. Which statement gives the central idea as the history finally develops it?
- Herodotus describes a runner sent from Athens to Sparta, about 150 miles, and says nothing of a run to Athens.
- At the 1908 London Games, the course ran from Windsor Castle to the royal box, a distance of 26 miles and 385 yards.
- The marathon began when a messenger ran from Marathon to Athens in 490 BCE, announced a victory, and then collapsed.
- The marathon feels ancient, but its legend grew in later retellings and its length was settled by modern decisions.
The gist of paragraph 3 is that the marathon's length was settled by convenience, not by tradition. Which sentence backs that gist with a specific fact instead of repeating it?
- [4] Herodotus, writing about half a century after the battle, mentions a runner named Pheidippides who was sent from Athens to Sparta to ask for help, a trip of roughly 150 miles over rough ground.
- [9] A Greek water carrier named Spyridon Louis won it.
- [10] No fixed length existed after that.
- [11] At the 1908 London Games, officials began the course at Windsor Castle and ended it in front of the royal box, which produced a distance of 26 miles and 385 yards, and that odd number was adopted as the standard in 1921.
Credit at Lyme (profile)
[1] Along the cliffs of Lyme Regis, on England's southern coast, the winter storms of the early 1800s did a kind of free digging. [2] They broke off slabs of rock, and families in the town learned to walk the beach after a gale, looking for whatever had fallen out. [3] Mary Anning, whose father built furniture and sold fossils as a sideline, began collecting as a child, and by the age of about twelve she had helped uncover the fossil of a sea reptile that scientists later named Ichthyosaurus.
[4] Over the next three decades she found more, including the first nearly complete plesiosaur fossil in 1823. [5] Her shop on the seafront drew gentlemen scholars from London and Paris, who bought specimens and asked her how the bones fitted together. [6] Over time, her opinion became as sought after as her stock.
[7] Yet the scholars who wrote the papers rarely wrote her name. [8] They described her finds in lectures at the Geological Society of London, which did not admit women as members until 1904. [9] Visitors praised her knowledge in letters, and a few admitted in private that she understood the animals better than they did. [10] In print, she was more likely to appear as a seller of specimens than as a scientist.
[11] After Anning's death in 1847, the Society's president, who had known her for years, wrote an appreciation of her that was published the next year. [12] That was an unusual honor for someone who could never have been a member. [13] Her story is often told as one about a gifted girl who found lucky fossils. [14] The letters from her customers describe someone else: an expert who was consulted, paid and seldom named.
Ren is building the gist ladder for this profile. Which statement gives the central idea as the profile finally develops it?
- Gentlemen scholars traveled from London and Paris to her shop, bought specimens and asked how the bones fitted together.
- Anning was a skilled expert whom scholars relied on, yet the way credit was given kept her name out of print.
- The Geological Society of London, which heard lectures about her finds, did not admit women as members until 1904.
- Anning was a gifted girl who found fossils by luck after storms broke open the cliffs near her family's town.
Tala marks the step where the central idea is refined. In which paragraph does the profile turn from what Anning found to how her work was treated?
- Paragraph 1, where winter storms and a childhood on the beach lead to the fossil of a sea reptile.
- Paragraph 3, where the scholars who wrote the papers rarely wrote her name.
- Paragraph 2, where her finds and her shop make scholars seek out her opinion as well as her stock.
- Paragraph 4, where an appreciation of her is published after her death in 1847.
