9-10 Grade – Unit 1 Assessment – RI.9-10.3, RI.9-10.7, RI.9-10.10, RL.9-10.5, RL.9-10.7, RL.9-10.9, RL.9-10.10, W.9-10.1, W.9-10.1a, W.9-10.1b, SL.9-10.1, L.9-10.2

A student is writing an argumentative essay about funding for public schools. Read the excerpt from her essay and the directions that follow.

For many students, public education provides them with a quality education that prepares them for college and careers beyond high school. According to recent statistics from the Department of Education, it costs almost $12,000 per pupil for one year of funding at a public school. This costs includes direct expenses as well as indirect expenses, including operational costs. Unfortunately, in some school districts, this per student funding is not enough. Programs such as performing arts, music and even sports have been cut to offset growing costs. In order to improve education for all students, it is important to increase funding for all public schools.

1. What is the student’s claim?

A student is writing an argumentative essay about funding for public schools. Read the excerpt from her essay and the directions that follow.

For many students, public education provides them with a quality education that prepares them for college and careers beyond high school. According to recent statistics from the Department of Education, it costs almost $12,000 per pupil for one year of funding at a public school. This costs includes direct expenses as well as indirect expenses, including operational costs. Unfortunately, in some school districts, this per student funding is not enough. Programs such as performing arts, music and even sports have been cut to offset growing costs. In order to improve education for all students, it is important to increase funding for all public schools.

2. Which of the following  sentences from the essay is evidence?

Some students are preparing a process analysis presentation for speech class. The students have written down some notes. Read their notes and the directions that follow.

The Puppy Training Process

1.  Select a breed of puppy that fits one’s living quarters. Some breeds need outdoor space to run whereas other breeds may be more appropriate for apartment living.
2. Determine where the puppy will live. Crates, laundry rooms, basements or outdoor kennels  are just a few places where some pet owners house their dogs.
3. Identify where the puppy will be potty trained. Will you use special mats inside? Or grass outside?
4. Establish a routine for when and where your puppy will potty and be consistent.  Reward your puppy with age and breed appropriate treats when he/she responds in an obedient manner.

3. The group has decided to meet. What is one of the first things that the group should do?

4. Read the sentences. Select all answer choices that display correct semicolon usage.

Read the following poem and the directions that follow.

Spirits of the Dead

By Edgar Allen Poe

I

Thy soul shall find itself alone

’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone—

Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

Into thine hour of secrecy.

II

Be silent in that solitude,

Which is not loneliness—for then

The spirits of the dead who stood

In life before thee are again

In death around thee—and their will

Shall overshadow thee: be still.

III

The night, tho’ clear, shall frown—

And the stars shall look not down

From their high thrones in the heaven,

With light like Hope to mortals given—

But their red orbs, without beam,

To thy weariness shall seem

As a burning and a fever

Which would cling to thee forever.

IV

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish,

Now are visions ne’er to vanish;

From thy spirit shall they pass

No more—like dew-drop from the grass.

V

The breeze—the breath of God—is still—

And the mist upon the hill,

Shadowy—shadowy—yet unbroken,

Is a symbol and a token—

How it hangs upon the trees,

A mystery of mysteries!

5. How does the author use the simile of:  With light like Hope to mortals given to add to the poem’s suspense?

Pieter Brueghel the Elder (c. 1525-1569), Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.

An interpretation of the Greek myth Icarus and Daedalus

Among all those mortals who grew so wise that they learned the secrets of the gods, none was more cunning than Daedalus.

He once built, for King Minos of Crete, a wonderful Labyrinth of winding ways so cunningly tangled up and twisted around that, once inside, you could never find your way out again without a magic clue. But the king’s favor veered with the wind, and one day he had his master architect imprisoned in a tower. Daedalus managed to escape from his cell; but it seemed impossible to leave the island, since every ship that came or went was well guarded by order of the king.

At length, watching the sea-gulls in the air,—the only creatures that were sure of liberty,—he thought of a plan for himself and his young son Icarus, who was captive with him.

Little by little, he gathered a store of feathers great and small. He fastened these together with thread, moulded them in with wax, and so fashioned two great wings like those of a bird. When they were done, Daedalus fitted them to his own shoulders, and after one or two efforts, he found that by waving his arms he could winnow the air and cleave it, as a swimmer does the sea. He held himself aloft, wavered this way and that with the wind, and at last, like a great fledgling, he learned to fly.

Without delay, he fell to work on a pair of wings for the boy Icarus, and taught him carefully how to use them, bidding him beware of rash adventures among the stars. “Remember,” said the father, “never to fly very low or very high, for the fogs about the earth would weigh you down, but the blaze of the sun will surely melt your feathers apart if you go too near.”

For Icarus, these cautions went in at one ear and out by the other. Who could remember to be careful when he was to fly for the first time? Are birds careful? Not they! And not an idea remained in the boy’s head but the one joy of escape.

The day came, and the fair wind that was to set them free. The father bird put on his wings, and, while the light urged them to be gone, he waited to see that all was well with Icarus, for the two could not fly hand in hand. Up they rose, the boy after his father. The hateful ground of Crete sank beneath them; and the country folk, who caught a glimpse of them when they were high above the tree-tops, took it for a vision of the gods,—Apollo, perhaps, with Cupid after him.

At first there was a terror in the joy. The wide vacancy of the air dazed them,—a glance downward made their brains reel. But when a great wind filled their wings, and Icarus felt himself sustained, like a halcyon-bird in the hollow of a wave, like a child uplifted by his mother, he forgot everything in the world but joy. He forgot Crete and the other islands that he had passed over: he saw but vaguely that winged thing in the distance before him that was his father Daedalus. He longed for one draught of flight to quench the thirst of his captivity: he stretched out his arms to the sky and made towards the highest heavens.

Alas for him! Warmer and warmer grew the air. Those arms, that had seemed to uphold him, relaxed. His wings wavered, drooped. He fluttered his young hands vainly,—he was falling,—and in that terror he remembered. The heat of the sun had melted the wax from his wings; the feathers were falling, one by one, like snowflakes; and there was none to help.

He fell like a leaf tossed down the wind, down, down, with one cry that overtook Daedalus far away. When he returned, and sought high and low for the poor boy, he saw nothing but the bird-like feathers afloat on the water, and he knew that Icarus was drowned.

The nearest island he named Icaria, in memory of the child; but he, in heavy grief, went to the temple of Apollo in Sicily, and there hung up his wings as an offering. Never again did he attempt to fly.

6. In contrast to the passage, what does painter Brueghel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus most emphasize about the Greek myth in terms of theme?

Read the following excerpt from the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare and answer the question that follows.

LADY MACBETH

‘They met me in the day of success: and I have

learned by the perfectest report, they have more in

them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire

to question them further, they made themselves air,

into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in

the wonder of it, came missives from the king, who

all-hailed me ‘Thane of Cawdor;’ by which title,

before, these weird sisters saluted me, and referred

me to the coming on of time, with ‘Hail, king that

shalt be!’ This have I thought good to deliver

thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that thou

mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being

ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it

to thy heart, and farewell.’

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be

What thou art promised: yet do I fear thy nature;

It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness

To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great;

Art not without ambition, but without

The illness should attend it: what thou wouldst highly,

That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,

And yet wouldst wrongly win: thou’ldst have, great Glamis,

That which cries ‘Thus thou must do, if thou have it;

And that which rather thou dost fear to do

Than wishest should be undone.’ Hie thee hither,

That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;

And chastise with the valour of my tongue

All that impedes thee from the golden round,

Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem

To have thee crown’d withal.

Read the following line from the passage:

That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;

7. What does “pour my spirits” allude to?

Read the poem below then answer the questions that follow.

“I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud” by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

8. What is the setting of the final stanza of the poem?

A student is analyzing an informational text. Read the excerpt from the text and the directions that follow.

Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville

[1] Aristocratic countries abound in wealthy and influential persons who are competent to provide for themselves and who cannot be easily or secretly oppressed; such persons restrain a government within general habits of moderation and reserve. I am well aware that democratic countries contain no such persons naturally, but something analogous to them may be created by artificial means. I firmly believe that an aristocracy cannot again be founded in the world, but I think that private citizens, by combining together, may constitute bodies of great wealth, influence, and strength, corresponding to the persons of an aristocracy. By this means many of the greatest political advantages of aristocracy would be obtained without its injustice or its dangers. An association for political, commercial, or manufacturing purposes, or even for those of science and literature, is a powerful and enlightened member of the community, which cannot be disposed of at pleasure or oppressed without remonstrance, and which, by defending its own rights against the encroachments of the government, saves the common liberties of the country.

[2] In periods of aristocracy every man is always bound so closely to many of his fellow citizens that he cannot be assailed without their coming to his assistance. In ages of equality every man naturally stands alone; he has no hereditary friends whose co-operation he may demand, no class upon whose sympathy he may rely; he is easily got rid of, and he is trampled on with impunity. At the present time an oppressed member of the community has therefore only one method of self-defense: he may appeal to the whole nation, and if the whole nation is deaf to his complaint, he may appeal to mankind. The only means he has of making this appeal is by the press. Thus the liberty of the press is infinitely more valuable among democratic nations than among all others; it is the only cure for the evils that equality may produce. Equality sets men apart and weakens them; but the press places a powerful weapon within every man’s reach, which the weakest and loneliest of them all may use. Equality deprives a man of the support of his connections, but the press enables him to summon all his fellow countrymen and all his fellow men to his assistance. Printing has accelerated the progress of equality, and it is also one of its best correctives.

[3] I think that men living in aristocracies may, strictly speaking, do without the liberty of the press; but such is not the case with those who live in democratic countries. To protect their personal independence I do not trust to great political assemblies, to parliamentary privilege, or to the assertion of popular sovereignty. All these things may, to a certain extent, be reconciled with personal servitude. But that servitude cannot be complete if the press is free; the press is the chief democratic instrument of freedom.

9. How does the author draw the conclusion that “the press is the chief democratic instrument of freedom”?

A Popular Folk Song from the Great Depression:

“Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries” written by Lew Brown

Life is just a bowl of cherries

Don’t take it serious,

Life’s too mysterious

You work,

You save,

You worry so

But you can’t take your dough

When you go, go, go

So keep repeating “It’s the berries.”

The strongest oak must fall

The sweet things in life

To you were just loaned

So how can you lose

What you’ve never owned

Life is just a bowl of cherries

So live and laugh, aha!

Laugh and love

Live and laugh,

Laugh and love,

Live and laugh at it all!

10. Which sentence most likely explains how the purposes of each piece differ?

Read the excerpt below and the directions that follow.

Miquel de Cervantes was a revered Spanish writer who gained much acclaim for his exquisite, yet humorous writing style. Most famous for his text, Don Quixote, deCervantes did not receive literary success or acclaim until the later years of his life.

Born in Madrid in 1547 to an upper-class family, his father was a deaf surgeon. Like many young men in Spain, he enlisted in the army and officially became a soldier in 1570. He was severely wounded in an intense exchange called the Battle of Lepanto. When he was captured by his enemies, the Turks, he became a prisoner of war. He spent a total of five years in prison. Upon being freed in 1580, he returned home to Madrid.

After several years at home, he began to write extensively. He successfully published  the first part of Don Quixote in 1605. He died in 1616. To this day, many high school and university students still read his text and enjoy its universal themes and the comedic antics of the protagonist.

11. What is the primary purpose of this opening paragraph?

Read the following opinion/editorial article from a blog and the directions that follow.

“Going Back in Time” by Clarence Earline

Shortly after the 1970s energy crisis, President Nixon signed the National Maximum Speed Law (NMSL) in 1974. Rather than allowing states to decide their own speed limits, a national speed limit of 55 miles per hour was implemented on state, interstate and federal highways. Many people saved money on gas and several lives were saved. In essence, people became better and more courteous drivers as they paid more attention while driving. Drivers were no longer in a rush and they took their time to get to their desired locations. Unfortunately, NMSL was changed to 65 miles per hour in 1987 and totally repealed by Congress in 1995. I believe that it is time for us to return to a National Maximum Speed Law. As we used to say back in the 1970s and 1980s, “Drive 55 and bring them home alive.”

12. What are the limitations of the author’s claim?