How ideas are ordered and linked
Grade 9 Reading Worksheet
Circle the best answer.
Read this first
From Gliders to Flight (article)
[1] By the 1890s, many inventors had tried to build flying machines, but Wilbur and Orville Wright, two brothers who ran a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, believed that the greatest unsolved problem was control. [2] A flying machine, they reasoned, would be useless unless its pilot could keep it balanced and steer it in the air, so they decided to solve control before they worried about an engine. [3] Watching birds, Wilbur noticed that they tilted the tips of their wings to turn and to stay level, and the brothers designed wings that could be twisted in the same way, a method they called wing warping.
[4] In 1900 and 1901, the brothers tested gliders on the windy sand hills near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. [5] The 1901 glider lifted far less than they had expected, even though they had designed it with tables of air pressure published by earlier experimenters. [6] Because their results did not match the tables, the Wrights began to suspect that the published numbers themselves were wrong.
[7] To find the right numbers, the brothers built a small wind tunnel in Dayton that fall, a wooden box with a fan that blew a steady stream of air over model wings. [8] They tested about two hundred wing shapes, measured how much each one lifted, and used their own numbers to design a new glider. [9] In 1902 that glider flew well, and the brothers made hundreds of controlled glides with it on the same sand hills.
[10] Only then did they add power, building a light gasoline engine with the help of their mechanic, Charlie Taylor, and carving their own propellers. [11] On December 17, 1903, Orville made the first powered, controlled flight of their machine, staying in the air for twelve seconds and covering 120 feet. [12] On the fourth flight that day, Wilbur flew 852 feet in 59 seconds. [13] The engine lifted them off the ground, but the years spent solving control and lift are what made the flight a success.
Bo describes how the whole article is organized. Which choice names the pattern and how it serves the central idea?
- Time order, from the 1890s to 1903, so the reader sees control and lift solved before the engine was added.
- Compare and contrast, setting Wilbur's ideas against Orville's to show which brother did more of the work overall.
- Time order, from the 1890s to 1903, so the reader sees that the engine was what made the flight a success.
- It is about two brothers from Dayton, Ohio, their gliders at Kitty Hawk and their first flight.
Esme looks for the sentence that joins the glider work in paragraph 3 to the powered flight in paragraph 4. Which sentence does that?
- [12] On the fourth flight that day, Wilbur flew 852 feet in 59 seconds.
- [10] Only then did they add power, building a light gasoline engine with the help of their mechanic, Charlie Taylor, and carving their own propellers.
- [1] By the 1890s, many inventors had tried to build flying machines, but Wilbur and Orville Wright, two brothers who ran a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, believed that the greatest unsolved problem was control.
- [6] Because their results did not match the tables, the Wrights began to suspect that the published numbers themselves were wrong.
Moving Continents (article)
[1] In 1912, the German scientist Alfred Wegener proposed that the continents had once been joined in a single landmass and had slowly drifted apart. [2] He pointed out that the coasts of South America and Africa fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. [3] He also showed that fossils of the same small reptile, Mesosaurus, are found in both places, and that matching layers of rock appear on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
[4] Most geologists of his time, however, rejected the idea. [5] Wegener could not explain what force was strong enough to push whole continents across the solid floor of the ocean, and his critics argued that without such a force, the matching coasts and fossils were not enough. [6] For decades, continental drift remained an interesting idea that few scientists accepted.
[7] The missing piece of the explanation came from the ocean floor itself. [8] In the 1950s, ships mapped long underwater mountain ranges, called mid-ocean ridges, running down the middle of the oceans. [9] In 1962, the American geologist Harry Hess proposed that new seafloor forms at these ridges, where hot rock rises from below and spreads outward, carrying older seafloor away on both sides. [10] Soon afterward, scientists found matching stripes of magnetic rock on either side of the ridges, just as Hess's idea predicted.
[11] By the late 1960s, these findings had grown into the theory of plate tectonics. [12] The theory holds that Earth's outer shell is broken into large plates that move a few inches a year or less, carried along as new seafloor forms at the ridges and old seafloor sinks back into the Earth at deep ocean trenches. [13] Wegener had been right that continents move, though wrong about how: they ride on plates instead of plowing through the ocean floor.
Jun labels the link between paragraph 1 and paragraph 2, using only the article. Which label and reason fit?
- Example: paragraph 2 gives another example of evidence that the continents were once joined.
- Contrast: paragraph 2 sets the coast of South America against the coast of Africa to show how they differ.
- Contrast: paragraph 1 gives Wegener's evidence for drift, and paragraph 2 says most geologists rejected it.
- Cause: Wegener's matching fossils led most geologists of his time to accept the idea of drift.
Kira describes how the whole article is organized. Which choice names the pattern and how it serves the central idea?
- Time order, from 1912 to the late 1960s, to show how new evidence turned a rejected idea into an accepted theory.
- Compare and contrast, setting the fossils of South America against those of Africa to show how they differ from each other.
- Time order, from 1912 to the late 1960s, to show that Wegener was wrong to think the continents move.
- It is about Alfred Wegener, Harry Hess, mid-ocean ridges and the plates of Earth's outer shell.
A Chain of Islands (article)
[1] The Hawaiian Islands sit in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, more than two thousand miles from the nearest continent and far from the edge of any tectonic plate. [2] Because most volcanoes form where plates meet, the islands' volcanoes puzzled geologists for a long time. [3] In 1963, the Canadian geologist J. Tuzo Wilson offered an explanation: a hotspot, a place deep beneath the plate where unusually hot rock rises toward the surface.
[4] The hotspot stays in roughly one place while the Pacific Plate slides slowly over it toward the northwest. [5] Each time melted rock breaks through the seafloor above the hotspot, it builds a volcano, which may grow tall enough to rise above the waves as an island. [6] As the plate carries that island away, its volcano loses its supply of melted rock and goes quiet, and a new volcano begins to form behind it.
[7] The main islands show this process clearly; for example, Kauai, near the northwest end of the chain, is one of the oldest, and its volcano has been quiet for millions of years while wind and rain have carved it into deep canyons. [8] The Island of Hawaii, at the southeast end, is the youngest, and two of its volcanoes, Kilauea and Mauna Loa, still erupt. [9] Southeast of it, an underwater volcano is already growing on the seafloor and may one day become the next island.
[10] The chain does not stop at the main islands, though. [11] To the northwest, it continues as a long line of smaller, older islands, worn-down reefs and sunken volcanoes stretching across the Pacific. [12] Wilson's idea explained the whole line at once, because each island marks a place where the plate once sat above the hotspot. [13] The chain, in other words, is a record of how the plate has moved.
Milo labels the link between paragraph 2 and paragraph 3, using only the article. Which label and reason fit?
- Cause: paragraph 3 shows that the deep canyons on Kauai are what made its volcano go quiet.
- Sequence: paragraph 3 tells what happened to the islands after Wilson explained the hotspot in 1963.
- Example: paragraph 3 uses Kauai and the Island of Hawaii to show the process described in paragraph 2.
- Contrast: paragraph 3 shows that the main islands formed in a different way from the one in paragraph 2.
Noah describes how the whole article is organized. Which choice names the pattern and how it serves the central idea?
- Cause and effect: a fixed hotspot and a moving plate make the islands, so the chain shows that the hotspot drifts northwest.
- Time order of discovery, telling which island explorers reached first and which they reached last.
- It is about the Hawaiian Islands, J. Tuzo Wilson, Kauai, Kilauea and Mauna Loa.
- Cause and effect: a fixed hotspot and a moving plate make the islands, so the chain becomes a record of the plate's motion.
Pia looks for the sentence that joins the main islands in paragraph 3 to the rest of the chain in paragraph 4. Which sentence does that?
- [10] The chain does not stop at the main islands, though.
- [1] The Hawaiian Islands sit in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, more than two thousand miles from the nearest continent and far from the edge of any tectonic plate.
- [9] Southeast of it, an underwater volcano is already growing on the seafloor and may one day become the next island.
- [7] The main islands show this process clearly; for example, Kauai, near the northwest end of the chain, is one of the oldest, and its volcano has been quiet for millions of years while wind and rain have carved it into deep canyons.
Why the Moon Changes Shape (article)
[1] Many people believe that the Moon's changing shape is caused by Earth's shadow falling across it, but that explanation is mistaken. [2] The Moon makes no light of its own; it shines because its surface reflects light from the Sun. [3] At any moment, the Sun lights half of the Moon, just as it lights the half of Earth where it is daytime.
[4] What changes from night to night is how much of that sunlit half faces Earth. [5] The Moon travels around Earth about once a month, and as it moves, people on Earth see its lit half from a changing angle. [6] When the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, its lit side faces away from us, and we see a dark new moon.
[7] Over the following two weeks, the lit part that we can see grows night after night, through a thin crescent and a half-lit quarter moon to a full moon, when the whole sunlit face is turned toward Earth. [8] After that, the lit part shrinks again through the same shapes in reverse, until the Moon is new once more. [9] The whole cycle, from one new moon to the next, takes about twenty-nine and a half days.
[10] Earth's shadow does sometimes fall on the Moon, but that is a different event, called a lunar eclipse. [11] An eclipse can happen only near a full moon, when the Sun, Earth and Moon line up, and it lasts a few hours instead of a month. [12] Because the Moon's path is slightly tilted, the three bodies line up closely enough on only some full moons, so most full moons pass without an eclipse. [13] The phases, then, come from the Moon's motion around Earth, while the shadow belongs to the much rarer eclipse.
Ren labels the link between paragraph 2 and paragraph 3, using only the article. Which label and reason fit?
- Cause: paragraph 3 shows that the dark new moon is what makes the next full moon brighter.
- Sequence: paragraph 3 follows the Moon from the dark new moon through its shapes to full and back again.
- Example: paragraph 3 gives an example of Earth's shadow falling across the face of the Moon.
- Sequence: paragraph 3 tells the order in which astronomers discovered the different phases.
Tala describes how the whole article is organized. Which choice names the pattern and how it serves the central idea?
- It is about the Moon, its shapes, its monthly trip around Earth and the lunar eclipse.
- Compare and contrast: it sets the Moon against Earth to show that the Moon gets more hours of daylight.
- Compare and contrast: it sets a mistaken belief against the true cause, then separates the phases from eclipses.
- Time order of history, telling how astronomers over the centuries came to understand the Moon.
Zee looks for the sentence that joins the half-lit Moon in paragraph 1 to the changing angle in paragraph 2. Which sentence does that?
- [1] Many people believe that the Moon's changing shape is caused by Earth's shadow falling across it, but that explanation is mistaken.
- [4] What changes from night to night is how much of that sunlit half faces Earth.
- [6] When the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, its lit side faces away from us, and we see a dark new moon.
- [10] Earth's shadow does sometimes fall on the Moon, but that is a different event, called a lunar eclipse.
