11-12 Grade – Unit 3 Assessment – RI.11-12.1, RI.11-12.2, RI.11-12.3, RI.11-12.6, RI.11-12.8, RL.11-12.5, W.11-12.5, SL.11-12.2, L.11-12.4, SL.11-12.1

A student is planning to write an article about the author Maya Angelou. Read the outline for his essay and the directions that follow.

1. Introduction: Why is Maya Angelou an important author?

• accomplishments
• cultural significance

2. Biography

• early years
• adulthood and early career
• later career
• death

3. Significance of Works

• “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”

4. Conclusion

• legacy

1. Which of the following is the best revision for the outline?

A student is planning to write an article about the author Maya Angelou. Read the outline for his essay and the directions that follow.

1. Introduction: Why is Maya Angelou an important author?

• accomplishments
• cultural significance

2. Biography

• early years
• adulthood and early career
• later career
• death

3. Significance of Works

• “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”

4. Conclusion

• legacy

2. After writing his outline, which step should the student take next?

A student is doing a presentation about cyber bullying. Read a section from her presentation and the direction that follows.

A simple Facebook status or tweet are all that it takes to enter into the world of cyber bullying. As social media has become more prevalent, so has its abuse. High school students across the nation have been exposed to some vile, mean-spirited and cruel bullying. Unlike traditional bullying, cyber bullying can be done anonymously or using a pseudonym which makes it difficult to track down the perpetrator.

Even more distressing is the fact that social media can be viewed and read by thousands, if not millions, of people. This often means that the victim is further victimized and humiliated by strangers. Unfortunately, cyber bullying has led to several suicides and deaths. As recently as 2015, most states do not have statutes or laws in place that make cyber bullying a crime.

3. The student has found several sources. Which of the following would be the most  credible source for this presentation?

You are writing a persuasive essay about your favorite sports player and you are making the claim that she is the most talented athlete of the modern era. After re-reading your first draft, you realize you used the word “dominant” several times to describe the athlete and her style of play. You need other words that mean the same as “dominant” so you can improve your writing by varying your word choice.

4. Which resource would be your best choice to consult to find words similar in meaning to the word “dominant”?

5. Which of the following two standards of behavior should be followed during group discussions?

Read the following text from The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln and answer the question that follows.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal.”

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. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

6.  How does the passage above support Lincoln’s purpose of emancipating African-American slaves in the United States?

Read the following text from the Library of Congress and answer the question that follows.

Hydroelectric power plants of today generate a lot more electricity. By the early 20th century, these plants produced a significant portion of the country’s electric energy. The cheap electricity provided by the plants spurred industrial growth in many regions of the country. To get even more power out of the flowing water, the government started building dams.

7. Based on the text, what happened after the first hydroelectric power plants were developed?

Read the following excerpt from the short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and answer the question that follows.

from “Bartleby, the Scrivener” by Herman Melville

At first Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing. As if long famishing for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my documents. There was no pause for digestion. He ran a day and night line, copying by sun-light and by candle-light. I should have been quite delighted with his application, had he been cheerfully industrious. But he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically.

It is, of course, an indispensable part of a scrivener’s business to verify the accuracy of his copy, word by word. Where there are two or more scriveners in an office, they assist each other in this examination, one reading from the copy, the other holding the original. It is a very dull, wearisome, and lethargic affair. I can readily imagine that to some sanguine temperaments it would be altogether intolerable. For example, I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet Byron would have contentedly sat down with Bartleby to examine a law document of, say five hundred pages, closely written in a crimpy hand.

8. Based on the text, which adjective best describes the poet Byron?

A student found a source about the Washington Monument. Read the paragraph and the directions that follow.

“The Washington Monument”

At least once in a lifetime, you encounter a place that you want to share with the world. In 1884, the Washington Monument was completed. It was built as a tribute to the first president of the United States, George Washington.  Standing over 555 feet tall, it was the tallest structure in the United States. To make sure that it remained taller than other buildings, a law was passed in 1910 that it remain the tallest building in Washington, D.C. To this day, it is the greatest monument ever and everyone should visit it.

9. Which sentences indicate that the author’s purpose is to persuade the reader?

Read the following excerpt from the U.S. Bill of Rights and answer the question that follows.

Article [V.]

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Based on the text, why might someone who has committed a crime be exempt from going to court?

10. Based on the text, why might someone who has committed a crime be exempt from going to court?

Read the excerpt below from an article about the crash of the stock market in the 1930s and answer the question that follows.

from “The Stock Market Fell To Its Lowest Point During the Depression”, an article from the Library of Congress website

July 8, 1932

[1] George Mehales lost everything in the stock market crash of 1929, including his restaurant. “The first day of October in 1929 made me feel like I was rich . . . (then,) I was wiped out . . . I had nothing left.” Mehales, a Greek immigrant who lived in South Carolina, was just one of many inexperienced investors who hoped to get rich quick in the rapidly growing market of the 1920s. The stock market can be a good place to invest some of your money, but it is also risky, especially if you do not know much about stocks.

[2] The Great Crash affected everyone, even those who had not bought stocks. People ran to their banks to get their savings, fearing the banks would run out of money.

[3] Many banks had also invested in the stock market and lost money. W.W. Tarpley, a bank officer in Georgia, remembered the mob of people who came to his bank, fearful of losing everything, ” . . . people were losing their homes and some their savings of a lifetime. The saddest part of it was to see widows who probably had been left a little insurance and had put it all in the bank.”

[4] The crash triggered the Great Depression. People all over the country not only lost their money, but also they lost their jobs. Businesses closed because they could not afford to pay their workers. Stock prices continued to fall, and on July 8, 1932, the market hit its lowest point during the Depression. Many lives were drastically changed, but only a few for the better.

[5] Tarpley, the bank manager, was forced to sell his belongings and leave his hometown to look for work, but he was fortunate, as the Great Crash was only a minor setback for him. “Of course I felt like I was ruined at the time,” he told an interviewer in 1940, “but if the crash had not come, I might have still been down in that little South Georgia town working for a small salary.”

[6] When Franklin Roosevelt was elected president at the end of 1932, he promised Americans a New Deal to bring economic relief. The government created many agencies to revive industry and agriculture and create jobs to help Americans get back on their feet. Important reforms to the banking and investment industry were made. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was established to insure bank deposits, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was formed to protect against stock market fraud. It took a long time though for the American economy to emerge from the Great Depression. The depression continued for 10 more years and didn’t end until the military buildup of the early 1940s, as the United States geared up to enter World War ll.

Re-read this excerpt from the passage:

“Of course I felt like I was ruined at the time,” he told an interviewer in 1940, “but if the crash had not come, I might have still been down in that little South Georgia town working for a small salary.”

11. What major consequence of the Great Depression does this quote most address?

Read the excerpt from the novel Don Quixote below and answer the question that follows.

from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

You must know, then, that the above-named gentleman whenever he was at leisure (which was mostly all the year round) gave himself up to reading books of chivalry with such ardour and avidity that he almost entirely neglected the pursuit of his field-sports, and even the management of his property; and to such a pitch did his eagerness and infatuation go that he sold many an acre of tillageland to buy books of chivalry to read, and brought home as many of them as he could get. But of all there were none he liked so well as those of the famous Feliciano de Silva’s composition, for their lucidity of style and complicated conceits were as pearls in his sight, particularly when in his reading he came upon courtships and cartels, where he often found passages like “the reason of the unreason with which my reason is afflicted so weakens my reason that with reason I murmur at your beauty;” or again, “the high heavens, that of your divinity divinely fortify you with the stars, render you deserving of the desert your greatness deserves.” Over conceits of this sort the poor gentleman lost his wits, and used to lie awake striving to understand them and worm the meaning out of them; what Aristotle himself could not have made out or extracted had he come to life again for that special purpose. He was not at all easy about the wounds which Don Belianis gave and took, because it seemed to him that, great as were the surgeons who had cured him, he must have had his face and body covered all over with seams and scars. He commended, however, the author’s way of ending his book with the promise of that interminable adventure, and many a time was he tempted to take up his pen and finish it properly as is there proposed, which no doubt he would have done, and made a successful piece of work of it too, had not greater and more absorbing thoughts prevented him.

The author chose to structure this excerpt of text around which of the following elements of fiction?

12. The author chose to structure this excerpt of text around which of the following elements of fiction?