How ideas are ordered and linked
Grade 9 Reading Worksheet - Building Confidence
Circle the best answer.
Read this first
Why the Sky Is Blue (article)
[1] Sunlight looks white, but it is really a mixture of all the colors of the rainbow, as Isaac Newton showed when he passed a beam of sunlight through a glass prism. [2] Each color travels as a wave of light with its own wavelength, and blue and violet light have much shorter waves than red and orange light. [3] On its way to the ground, sunlight must pass through the atmosphere, a deep layer of air made mostly of tiny nitrogen and oxygen molecules.
[4] Because those molecules are far smaller than the waves of light, they scatter short waves much more strongly than long ones. [5] Blue light is bounced in many directions across the sky, while most of the red and yellow light passes straight through toward the ground. [6] Violet light is scattered even more than blue, but human eyes are less sensitive to violet, so the sky that we see looks blue. [7] Scientists call this effect Rayleigh scattering, after the British physicist Lord Rayleigh, who explained it in the 1870s.
[8] At sunset, however, the same scattering paints the sky orange and red instead of blue. [9] When the sun sits low on the horizon, its light must cross far more air to reach an observer than it does at noon. [10] Along that long path, nearly all of the blue light is scattered out of the beam, and the longer red and orange waves are what remain.
[11] The Moon offers a clear example of what happens when there is almost no air at all. [12] Because the Moon has almost no atmosphere, nothing scatters sunlight there, and photographs taken by astronauts on its surface show a black sky even in full daylight. [13] A blue sky, then, is not the color of the air itself but a sign that air is present and is scattering the light that passes through it.
Gist ladder (one rung for each paragraph; ? marks an arrow to label; ★ marks the step where the central idea is refined): P1: sunlight is a mix of colors with different wavelengths, and it must pass through air → ? → P2: air molecules scatter short blue waves far more than long red ones → ? → P3: at sunset, light crosses so much air that the blue is scattered away and red remains → ? → P4: the Moon, with no air, has a black sky; a blue sky is a sign of air ★
Ari labels the arrow from paragraph 2 to paragraph 3 on the ladder. Which label and reason fit that arrow?
- Cause: paragraph 3 shows that the blue daytime sky is what makes the sunset turn red.
- Contrast: paragraph 3 shows the same scattering turning the sky red at sunset instead of blue.
- Contrast: paragraph 3 sets violet light against blue light to explain why our eyes see blue.
- Example: paragraph 3 gives one more example of blue light scattered across the noon sky.
Bo looks for the words that link paragraph 4 to paragraph 3. Which words in the article signal that link?
- even in full daylight, in sentence 12
- offers a clear example, in sentence 11
- The Moon, in sentence 11
- however, in sentence 8
How a Hurricane Grows (article)
[1] A hurricane begins far from land, over a tropical ocean whose surface water has been warmed by the summer sun to about 80 degrees Fahrenheit or more. [2] Warm water evaporates quickly, so the air just above the waves becomes warm and heavy with water vapor. [3] Because warm, moist air is lighter than the cooler air around it, the air starts to rise in tall, invisible columns.
[4] As the rising air climbs, it cools, and its water vapor condenses into towering thunderclouds. [5] Condensation releases heat, and that heat warms the air inside the clouds and makes it rise even faster. [6] The rising air leaves an area of low pressure near the surface of the ocean, and more warm, moist air rushes in across the water to fill it. [7] In this way, the storm keeps feeding itself for as long as it stays over warm water.
[8] Next, the rotation of the Earth sets the whole system turning, which in the Northern Hemisphere means a counterclockwise spiral around a calm center called the eye. [9] Forecasters call the storm a tropical storm once its steady winds reach 39 miles per hour, and a hurricane once they reach 74 miles per hour. [10] By then the spiral of clouds can stretch across hundreds of miles of ocean.
[11] Once a hurricane moves over land or over cold water, however, it begins to weaken. [12] Without warm ocean water beneath it, the storm loses the steady supply of moist air that powered it, and its winds gradually slow. [13] The heat stored in tropical water is therefore both what builds a hurricane and what it cannot keep going without.
Gist ladder (one rung for each paragraph; ? marks an arrow to label; ★ marks the step where the central idea is refined): P1: warm ocean water heats moist air, which rises → ? → P2: rising air forms clouds, releases heat and pulls in more air, so the storm feeds itself → ? → P3: the storm begins to spin and its winds reach hurricane strength → ? → P4: over land or cold water it weakens; warm water is its fuel ★
Jun labels the arrow from paragraph 2 to paragraph 3 on the ladder. Which label and reason fit that arrow?
- Sequence: paragraph 3 gives the next stage, when the storm begins to spin and reaches hurricane strength.
- Cause: paragraph 3 shows that the thunderclouds of paragraph 2 are what make the Earth rotate.
- Example: paragraph 3 describes one famous storm that stayed over warm tropical water for several weeks in a row.
- Sequence: paragraph 3 tells the order in which forecasters first named the different kinds of storms.
Kira looks for the word that links paragraph 4 to paragraph 3. Which words in the article signal that link?
- a hurricane, in sentence 11
- over land or over cold water, in sentence 11
- Next, in sentence 8
- however, in sentence 11
Luz asks why the article begins with warm ocean water. Which answer explains the place of paragraph 1?
- It gives the result of the process, the hurricane winds of 74 miles per hour that forecasters measure.
- It gives the starting conditions, warm water and rising moist air, that each later stage builds on.
- It says that tropical water warms to about 80 degrees and that warm, moist air rises in tall columns.
- It explains the eye of the storm, which paragraph 4 needs in order to explain why hurricanes weaken.
Finding the Way Home (article)
[1] Pacific salmon begin life in cold freshwater streams, where they hatch from eggs buried in the gravel of the streambed. [2] After a few months or, in some kinds, a year or more, the young fish swim downstream to the ocean, where they spend one or more years growing and traveling long distances. [3] When they are ready to lay eggs of their own, most of them return to the stream where they hatched, sometimes after swimming hundreds of miles upriver. [4] For a long time, how the fish found that one stream among thousands was a puzzle.
[5] Scientists now think that salmon use two different senses on the journey. [6] In the open ocean, they appear to steer by Earth's magnetic field, which helps them reach the right part of the coast. [7] Near the coast, the last part of the trip depends on smell, because each stream carries its own mix of scents from the soil, rocks and plants along its banks. [8] Young salmon seem to memorize the scent of their home stream before they leave it.
[9] An experiment in the 1950s, for example, tested the idea of smell directly. [10] The biologist Arthur Hasler and his team caught salmon that had returned to two branches of a stream in Washington State, plugged the noses of some of the fish, and released all of them farther downstream. [11] The fish that could still smell mostly swam back up their own branch, while the fish with plugged noses chose a branch more or less at random.
[12] Because of findings like these, people who protect salmon now pay attention to the water as well as to the fish. [13] Pollution that changes the scent of a stream could confuse returning salmon, and dams can block the route home, so many dams now have fish ladders, a series of small pools that let salmon climb past. [14] Keeping each stream's scent and path whole helps the fish find their way home.
Gist ladder (one rung for each paragraph; ? marks an arrow to label; ★ marks the step where the central idea is refined): P1: salmon hatch in streams, grow in the ocean and return to the stream where they hatched; how they find it was a puzzle → ? → P2: scientists think they use the magnetic field at sea and smell near the coast → ? → P3: a 1950s experiment with plugged noses tested the idea of smell → ? → P4: people who protect salmon now protect each stream's scent and path ★
Milo labels the arrow from paragraph 2 to paragraph 3 on the ladder. Which label and reason fit that arrow?
- Sequence: paragraph 3 tells the next stage of the journey, after the salmon reach the coast.
- Contrast: paragraph 3 shows that salmon steer by the magnetic field instead of by smell.
- Example: paragraph 3 describes one experiment that tested the idea of smell from paragraph 2.
- Cause: paragraph 3 shows that the plugged noses are what made salmon start to use smell.
Noah looks for the words that link paragraph 4 to paragraph 3. Which words in the article signal that link?
- for example, in sentence 9
- Because of findings like these, in sentence 12
- in the 1950s, in sentence 9
- people who protect salmon, in sentence 12
Pia asks why the article begins with the salmon's life and a puzzle. Which answer explains the place of paragraph 1?
- It gives the result of the 1950s experiment, which the rest of the article then explains in detail.
- It says that salmon hatch in streams, grow up in the ocean and return to the stream where they hatched.
- It explains fish ladders, which paragraph 3 needs in order to describe the experiment with plugged noses.
- It sets out the puzzle of how salmon find their home stream, which paragraphs 2 and 3 answer.
How Ice Carves a Valley (article)
[1] A river that runs down a mountain cuts its valley mostly from the bottom, wearing away the rock directly beneath the moving water. [2] Over thousands of years, the river digs a narrow channel while the steep sides above it slowly crumble inward. [3] The result is a valley shaped like the letter V, with sloping walls that meet at a narrow floor.
[4] A glacier, by contrast, fills its valley from wall to wall. [5] It is a huge, slow river of ice that forms where more snow falls each winter than melts each summer, so that the weight of the new snow presses the layers below into solid ice. [6] Pulled downhill by gravity, the glacier creeps forward, usually so slowly that the motion cannot be seen from one hour to the next.
[7] Because the ice presses against the sides of the valley as well as the floor, it grinds against all of them at once. [8] Rocks frozen into the bottom and edges of the glacier scrape the bedrock like coarse sandpaper, and the moving ice also pulls loose blocks of rock and carries them away. [9] As a result, over many thousands of years the glacier widens and deepens the old V-shaped valley into a broad U shape, with steep walls and a wide, flat floor.
[10] Yosemite Valley in California is one of the best-known examples of this shape. [11] Glaciers flowed through it during the ice ages and left the valley with sheer granite walls and a broad, level floor. [12] Smaller side valleys were not cut as deeply, so their streams now pour over the edge of the main valley as waterfalls, such as Bridalveil Fall. [13] A geologist who sees a U-shaped valley today can tell that ice once filled it, even where no glacier remains.
Gist ladder (one rung for each paragraph; ? marks an arrow to label; ★ marks the step where the central idea is refined): P1: a river cuts its valley from the bottom, leaving a V shape → ? → P2: a glacier is a slow river of ice that fills its valley from wall to wall → ? → P3: grinding on the floor and walls at once, the ice widens the V into a U → ? → P4: Yosemite Valley is an example; a U-shaped valley shows that ice once filled it ★
Ren labels the arrow from paragraph 2 to paragraph 3 on the ladder. Which label and reason fit that arrow?
- Contrast: paragraph 3 turns back to the river, which wears away the rock directly beneath its moving water.
- Sequence: paragraph 3 tells what the glacier does next, after it has melted away.
- Cause: paragraph 3 explains how the weight of new snow presses the layers below into ice.
- Cause: because the glacier fills its valley from wall to wall, it grinds the walls and floor into a U.
Tala looks for the words that link paragraph 2 to paragraph 1. Which words in the article signal that link?
- A glacier, in sentence 4
- As a result, in sentence 9
- by contrast, in sentence 4
- from wall to wall, in sentence 4