9-10 Grade – Unit 3 Assessment – RI.9-10.1, RI.9-10.2, RI.9-10.3, RI.9-10.4, RI.9-10.6, RL.9-10.9, RL.9-10.10, W.9-10.1a, W.9-10.1b, SL.9-10.1c, SL.9-10.4, L.9-10.3

A student is reading information from an essay. Read the essay and the directions that follow.

“Year Round School”  by Neva Thomas

Year round or a balanced school year incorporates as many school days as a traditional academic calendar year. However, instead of having breaks that revolve around the holidays and the summer, students typically spend eight weeks in class and then have a two week break. It is a great opportunity to make sure that students do not become academically disengaged during longer breaks. During the break, many school districts offer extensive tutorials or mini-classes to help students who need extra help and to prevent other students from falling behind.  Although some people celebrate this new development, others are not convinced. The concept is one that has been met with mixed reviews, especially by parents. Many have found it difficult to find childcare during the intermittent two week breaks; this has led to a greater financial burden for some parents.

1. Which of the following is the author’s claim?

A student is writing an essay. Read a paragraph from the essay and the directions that follow.

Waiting for the campus bus was the worst part of my freshman year. Having to get up 45 minutes early just to ensure that I made it to the bus stop cut into precious time that I could have used to study. Freshmen everywhere would benefit from being able to have cars on campus. Even if this meant a parking lot on the outskirts of campus, it sure would be better than having to walk or catch a bus.

2. What assumptions does the writer make about his audience?

3. Which of the following strategies will help you create an inclusive environment when collaborating with other students? Select all correct responses.

A professional freelance writer has done thorough research on the socioeconomic effects of food insecurity in impoverished urban communities. He has the opportunity to submit an article to an economics academic journal or a newspaper in a large market.

4. Does is matter what style guide he follows when writing his piece?

A student is doing a presentation for his history class. He wants to share information about why Susan B. Anthony’s image was not included on Mt. Rushmore.

5. Which of the following would most likely provide him with evidence that he can use?

Read the poem and answer the question that follows.

“Never Again Would Birds’ Song Be the Same” by Robert Frost

He would declare and could himself believe

That the birds there in all the garden round

From having heard their daylong voice of Eve

Had added to their own an oversound,

Her tone of meaning but without the words.

Admittedly an eloquence so soft

Could only have had an influence on birds

When call or laughter carried it aloft.

Be that as may be, she was in their song.

Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed

Had now persisted in the woods so long

That probably it never would be lost.

Never again would birds’ song be the same.

And to do that to birds was why she came.

6. Which of the following lines are examples of allusions? Select all that apply.

Read the background information and excerpt below from the novel Great Expectations, then answer the question that follows.

Background Information

This novel, completed in 1861, tells the story of Pip, who grows from a child to a man throughout the course of the book. In this excerpt from Chapter VIII Pip meets Miss Havisham, a wealthy woman who was left at the alter by her fiance.

excerpt from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

This was very uncomfortable, and I was half afraid. However, the only thing to be done being to knock at the door, I knocked, and was told from within to enter. I entered, therefore, and found myself in a pretty large room, well lighted with wax candles. No glimpse of daylight was to be seen in it. It was a dressing-room, as I supposed from the furniture, though much of it was of forms and uses then quite unknown to me. But prominent in it was a draped table with a gilded looking-glass, and that I made out at first sight to be a fine lady’s dressing-table. Whether I should have made out this object so soon if there had been no fine lady sitting at it, I cannot say. In an arm-chair, with an elbow resting on the table and her head leaning on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see. She was dressed in rich materials,—satins, and lace, and silks,—all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks, were scattered about. She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on,—the other was on the table near her hand,—her veil was but half arranged, her watch and chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay with those trinkets, and with her handkerchief, and gloves, and some flowers, and a Prayer-Book all confusedly heaped about the looking-glass.

7. Pip thinks Miss Havisham (and her room) are very odd. Select three details from the text that support this claim.

A student is analyzing a speech. Read the excerpt from the speech and the directions that follow.

Hattie McDaniel’s acceptance speech at the 1940 Academy Awards

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, fellow members of the motion picture industry and honored guests: This is one of the happiest moments of my life, and I want to thank each one of you who had a part in selecting me for one of their awards, for your kindness. It has made me feel very, very humble; and I shall always hold it as a beacon for anything that I may be able to do in the future. I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry. My heart is too full to tell you just how I feel, and may I say thank you and God bless you.

8. Some have argued that McDaniel’s speech was a celebration not just for her, but for all minorities. What evidence from the text supports this interpretation?

Read the following passage and the directions that follow.

“What Does American Democracy Mean to Me?”

by Mary McLeod Bethune

Democracy is for me, and for 12 million black Americans, a goal towards which our nation is marching. It is a dream and an ideal in whose ultimate realization we have a deep and abiding faith. For me, it is based on Christianity, in which we confidently entrust our destiny as a people. Under God’s guidance in this great democracy, we are rising out of the darkness of slavery into the light of freedom. Here my race has been afforded [the] opportunity to advance from a people 80 percent illiterate to a people 80 percent literate; from abject poverty to the ownership and operation of a million farms and 750,000 homes; from total disfranchisement to participation in government; from the status of chattels to recognized contributors to the American culture.

As we have been extended a measure of democracy, we have brought to the nation rich gifts. We have helped to build America with our labor, strengthened it with our faith and enriched it with our song. We have given you Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Booker T. Washington, Marian Anderson and George Washington Carver. But even these are only the first fruits of a rich harvest, which will be reaped when new and wider fields are opened to us.

The democratic doors of equal opportunity have not been opened wide to Negroes. In the Deep South, Negro youth is offered only one-fifteenth of the educational opportunity of the average American child. The great masses of Negro workers are depressed and unprotected in the lowest levels of agriculture and domestic service, while the black workers in industry are barred from certain unions and generally assigned to the more laborious and poorly paid work. Their housing and living conditions are sordid and unhealthy. They live too often in terror of the lynch mob; are deprived too often of the Constitutional right of suffrage; and are humiliated too often by the denial of civil liberties. We do not believe that justice and common decency will allow these conditions to continue.

Our faith envisions a fundamental change as mutual respect and understanding between our races come in the path of spiritual awakening. Certainly there have been times when we may have delayed this mutual understanding by being slow to assume a fuller share of our national responsibility because of the denial of full equality. And yet, we have always been loyal when the ideals of American democracy have been attacked. We have given our blood in its defense-from Crispus Attucks on Boston Commons to the battlefields of France. We have fought for the democratic principles of equality under the law, equality of opportunity, equality at the ballot box, for the guarantees of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We have fought to preserve one nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Yes, we have fought for America with all her imperfections, not so much for what she is, but for what we know she can be.

Perhaps the greatest battle is before us, the fight for a new America: fearless, free, united, morally re-armed, in which 12 million Negroes, shoulder to shoulder with their fellow Americans, will strive that this nation under God will have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, for the people and by the people shall not perish from the earth. This dream, this idea, this aspiration, this is what American democracy means to me.

9. Which of the following is NOT a supporting detail  that reinforces the author’s central idea about African Americans and a lack of democracy?

A student is analyzing the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Read the excerpt and the directions that follow.

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)

Each agency shall make available to the public information as follows:

(1) Each agency shall separately state and currently publish in the Federal Register for the guidance of the public—

(A) descriptions of its central and field organization and the established places at which, the employees (and in the case of a uniformed service, the members) from whom, and the methods whereby, the public may obtain information, make submittals or requests, or obtain decisions;

(B) statements of the general course and method by which its functions are channeled and determined, including the nature and requirements of all formal and informal procedures available;

(C) rules of procedure, descriptions of forms available or the places at which forms may be obtained, and instructions as to the scope and contents of all papers, reports, or examinations;

(D) substantive rules of general applicability adopted as authorized by law, and statements of general policy or interpretations of general applicability formulated and adopted by the agency; and

(E) each amendment, revision, or repeal of the foregoing.

10. What is the purpose of this section of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)?

Read the following excerpt from U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s speech upon signing the Civil Rights Act in 1967. Answer the question that follows.

Remarks Upon Signing the Civil Rights Bill (July 2, 1967) by Lyndon B. Johnson

My fellow Americans:

[…]One hundred and eighty-eight years ago this week a small band of valiant men began a long struggle for freedom. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor not only to found a nation, but to forge an ideal of freedom—not only for political independence, but for personal liberty—not only to eliminate foreign rule, but to establish the rule of justice in the affairs of men.

[…]We believe that all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty. Yet millions are being deprived of those blessings—not because of their own failures, but because of the color of their skin. The reasons are deeply imbedded in history and tradition and the nature of man. We can understand—without rancor or hatred—how this all happened. But it cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic, forbids it. The principles of our freedom forbid it. Morality forbids it. And the law I will sign tonight forbids it.

[…]That law is the product of months of the most careful debate and discussion. It was proposed more than one year ago by our late and beloved President John F. Kennedy. It received the bipartisan support of more than two-thirds of the Members of both the House and the Senate. An overwhelming majority of Republicans as well as Democrats voted for it. It has received the thoughtful support of tens of thousands of civic and religious leaders in all parts of this Nation. And it is supported by the great majority of the American people.

11. Based on clues in the text, we can assume that the word valiant in the first sentence of the excerpt means:

Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . .can long endure.  We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

12. From Lincoln’s point of view, how does the passage above support the cause of the Civil War?