Self Check Quiz
Standard
FCAT LA.A.2.3.8
Practice Test
1.
"Multicultural School"
From Where the River Runs: A Portrait of a Refugee Family
By Nancy Price Graff
Where the River Runs is about the Preks, a family who recently immigrated to the United States from Cambodia. Graff explores some of the reasons people immigrate and the challenges they face when they arrive. The following passage describes the school that the Prek children attend.
The Thomas Gardner School, just three blocks away, reflects the variety of Allston like a mirror. Its hallways are filled with a chorus of voices of five hundred children from eighteen different countries. These children have come from places where, for example, everyone uses gourds to drink water drawn by hand from village wells, or where ancient tribal customs encourage men to have many wives in order to have many children, or where it is considered unsanitary to eat with your left hand, or where dog meat and birds' nests are delicacies, or where everyone sits on the floor because there is no such thing as a chair. At the Gardner School, these children are introduced to drinking from water fountains, to families that have just one mother and father, to using silverware, to eating hamburgers, and to sitting on chairs. In time, they will begin to speak English with their friends and teachers. They will also come to understand and appreciate the habits and customs of children from all over the world. But in the meantime, they have much to learn about living in the United States that they will never find in their schoolbooks.
Many of the children at the school come from homes where only Spanish is spoken and understood. Half of them do not speak English well enough to learn in that language the kinds of things that children are traditionally taught in this country. They will spend three years in bilingual classrooms, where both English and Spanish are spoken. There they will learn the language of their new country while they are learning the literature, science, social studies, and math that children everywhere in the United States are learning in English-speaking schools. After three years, they will move into classrooms where only English is spoken and where the Spanish they learned to speak as babies is treated as a foreign language.
Because there are fewer of them and because they come from so many different countries, children from non-Spanish speaking countries, such as Cambodia and Haiti, India and Iran, are not placed in classrooms by themselves at the Gardner School. Instead, they are placed in classrooms where English is the language of learning. As they take their seats next to children with whom they may have much in common but few ways to share it, they can sense anger and happiness, orders and secrets, jokes and conversation, but the words that convey these feelings and ideas are meaningless. Until the new children learn to communicate with more than their hands and eyes and smiles, the lack of a common language will be like a stone wall low enough to see over, but too high to scale.
Based on the last sentence, what do you think is the author's opinion of the school setting?
a.
Children should not attend before they can speak English.
b.
The lack of a common language makes its difficult even if the children have other things in common.
c.
English-speaking children should try to befriend immigrants.
d.
Teachers have a responsibility to learn a variety of languages.
2.
"Evacuation and Internment During WW II"
By Craig Gingold
The following passage examines the treatment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II.
During the 1930s, extreme militarists seized power in Japan, and the Japanese army invaded China, committing many atrocities [acts of cruelty]. For many Americans, Japan's militarism rekindled fears of the "Yellow Peril" (an old newspaper slogan used to inflame public opinion with warnings that the US could be overrun by Chinese and Japanese immigration or invasion), and preposterous stories about Japanese Americans began to circulate. One even claimed that hundreds of Issei [Japanese immigrants] fishermen were really Japanese naval officers, ready to convert their fishing vessels into swift torpedo boats at a moment's notice. By 1940, however, war with Japan was a real threat.
In the first days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, reports of Japan's lightning victories across the Pacific created an atmosphere of shock and fear in the United States. People on the Pacific Coast expected a Japanese invasion at any time. Nervous U.S. Army radiomen turned in false alarms of Japanese aircraft and warships and filed dozens of mistaken reports of radio messages they thought had been transmitted by Japanese American agents along the coast.
Unfounded rumors of espionage [spying] and sabotage [destructive acts] multiplied wildly. It was said, for example, that Japanese farmers in Hawaii had cut their cane fields in the shape of an arrow to guide attacking planes to Pearl Harbor. Navy secretary Frank Knox gave credibility to some stories when he returned from Hawaii and blamed the Pearl Harbor disaster on the "treachery" of Japanese Americans living on the islands.
Anxious to prove their loyalty, Japanese Americans donated blood to the Red Cross and volunteered to serve as air raid wardens. The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) sent a telegram to President Franklin D. Roosevelt pledging its "fullest cooperation" in the war effort and worked closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to identify people suspected of disloyalty.
California governor Culburt Olson appealed for tolerance and fairness. Many newspapers reminded the public that the Nisei [people born in the US whose parents were immigrants from Japan] were loyal American citizens and should not be held responsible for Japan's actions. But such voices of reason were soon drowned out by the growing outcry calling government to "do something about the Japanese."
In Hawaii, the Army commander resisted calls to round up all people of Japanese ancestry (one-third of the population). But California's attorney general Earl Warren and General John De Witt, the officer in command of the entire West Coast, thought that there was a "vast conspiracy" under way in 1942. Maps of the counties showing all the vital facilities (such as dams, power plants, factories, and airports) were studied. They showed that the facilities were located next to land held by Japanese Americans. General De Witt was convinced that these facilities were targets for sabotage. He argued for removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast.
U.S. Attorney General Frances Biddle had held out against such proposals because they violated the constitutional rights of American citizens. One official told Biddle that in wartime, "the Constitution is just a scrap of paper." On February 13, Pacific Coast congressmen jointly asked the president for "immediate evacuation of all persons of Japanese lineage" from the West Coast. Six days later, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066.
At first, Japanese Americans were encouraged to relocate away from the West Coast on a "voluntary basis." But communities in California's central valley made it clear that they were not welcome, as did the governors of all the nearby states. Government officials then decided that Japanese Americans would have to be held in detention camps after their forced removal from the West Coast.
Beginning in late March, orders were posted giving Japanese Americans in specified areas about one week to dispose of homes, businesses, farms, and personal possessions. Families were sent first to sixteen hastily built "assembly centers" in Arizona, California, Oregon, and Washington state. Later in the year, they were moved to ten permanent detention camps, called relocation centers.
The War Relocation Authority, a civilian agency created to operate the camps, encouraged internees [people who are restricted to a certain place, especially during a war] to find outside employment in hopes of resettling them in other parts of the country. Religious groups helped line up jobs and housing for the internees. A dedicated group of educators helped college-age Nisei continue their education. By the end of 1944, thirty-five thousand people had left the camps. Since they were still prohibited from returning to the West Coast, most settled in cities such as Chicago, Denver, and New York.
In January 1945, Japanese Americans were finally allowed to return to their homes on the West Coast. Many faced threats and harassment, and some were physically assaulted. Many returned to houses and farms that had been vandalized in their absence. Even though they had to start from scratch, most somehow managed to rebuild their lives.
What was one of the fears circulated by U.S. newspapers?
a.
Japanese fisherman really operated torpedo boats.
b.
Japanese fisherman would transport naval officers.
c.
Japanese fisherman would start a war.
d.
Japanese fisherman would commit atrocities.
3.
"Japan: Learning at School"
From Children of the World: Japan
By Lucy Birmingham
The following passage describes a typical Japanese school and two students, Masayo and Hirofumi.
Masayo and Hirofumi are busy with school and studies. They attend school six days a week, as most school pupils do in Japan. They go from Monday to Saturday, but Saturday is a half day. Pupils wear uniforms in private schools. Hirofumi and Masayo's uniform is a yellow hat. Other schools have more formal uniforms.
School begins each day with an 8:30 A.M. assembly in the playground. Pupils line up class by class and form neat lines according to height. On Monday the headteacher gives a pep talk, encouraging everyone to work hard. On other days the children sing or exercise. They call their headteacher Kondo-sensei. Sensei, which means "teacher," is a term of respect.
Elementary students carry traditional leather book bags – black for boys and red for girls. It's worn on the back like a satchel and is often quite heavy. Students take most of their books and writing materials home with them every day.
There are five lessons of 45 minutes and a sixth lesson for meetings and activities, as well as two rest periods. At midday everyone stops for lunch and a daily cleaning period to tidy up the school.
Hirofumi is in the last year of junior school. He has the same teacher he had last year, Hamana-sensei. Masayo is two years below. Her teacher is Harada-sensei. For special classes, students have other teachers.
This morning Hirofumi's first lesson is music. All pupils learn to play an instrument, usually the recorder. In the second lesson they study the Japanese language. It takes years to learn how to read and write Japanese because it is made of two different alphabets. One, called kanji, has thousands of characters. Each symbolizes an object or idea. The other, called kana, has letters which represent sounds. It is more like the system used to write English.
Today, Hamana-sensei divides everyone into teams. Each team member goes to the blackboard and writes the kanji for a word the teacher calls out. They often look up characters in their dictionaries.
Today in science lesson, Masayo's teacher, Harada-sensei, talks about the reproduction and growth of potatoes. Everyone grows a potato plant to study.
What best describes the Japanese school playground in the morning?
a.
neat and orderly
b.
loud and chaotic
c.
sloppy and disorderly
d.
playful and fun
4.
"Separate Dishes"
From The Boy Child is Dying
By Judy Boppell Peace
Over the many years that apartheid existed, people of both races came to have certain expectations of one another. In this story, a new kind of relationship develops between two women, one black and one white.
We pulled into the drive-in restaurant. We stopped at one as often as possible when Mrs. Ntonsheni was in the car. We could not go into a restaurant together—one of the inconveniences of "petty apartheid." We ordered and settled back to wait, grateful for the chance to break our journey.
"Which order is for the girl?" the man at the car window asked Dick for the second time.
"Which girl do you mean? We have two daughters," said Dick. Jenny and Lisa romped together in the back sit oblivious to the conversation.
"You know what I mean." The man glared at us.
"No," Dick persisted politely, "I don't know what you mean."
The man took a deep breath. His face was flushed. His discomfort was evident. He pointed accusingly at Mrs. Ntonsheni.
"That girl!" There, he'd said it. He relaxed his breath and almost smiled.
"You couldn't possibly mean Mrs. Ntonsheni. She is at least fifty years old."
"You knew I meant her."
"No, I expected you to know the difference between a woman and a girl," said Dick.
"My mistake."
"Which is her order?" asked the man.
"What possible concern is that to you?" Dick replied.
"Natives cannot be served on our regular dishes. She has to have a tin plate and cup." The man was quick to catch the horror and disbelief that crossed our faces. "Nothing personal," he hastened to assure us. "We would lose customers if we didn't enforce this policy."
The man stood alone in the car space as the five customers he had just lost drove away.
My anger sputtered over in irrational statements and oaths against apartheid.
"Mrs. Peace, don't let yourself get so upset. You aren't hurting that man or the system or anyone but yourself. That was a minor incident for me. One of many I encounter in the course of a day. If I allowed myself to feel anger every time I was treated that way, I would be a sick woman by now."
"It was so stupid, so wrong, so humiliating," I said.
"Yes it was."
"How can you sit back and do nothing? Don't you care if you have to live this way?"
"It is my daily prayer to see this country change. Anything that brings a good change, I am for. But useless anger, destructive violence – that hurts me more than the man who calls me girl."
Reread the following statement from Mrs. Ntonsheni: "But useless anger, destructive violence—that hurts me more than the man who calls me girl." What does she mean?
a.
She does not care about the events she sees.
b.
She would be harmed more by constant anger than other people's ignorance.
c.
She expects the man who called her girl to become angry and violent.
d.
She believes violence is the way to end apartheid.
5.
"Deaf Brothers"
From The Clay Marble
By Minfong Ho
A story about life in a refugee camp along the Thai-Cambodian border in the 1970s.
The days at the Border passed quickly. I enjoyed spending my time with Jantu, since she was usually outgoing and friendly. Sometimes she would come up with new ideas about what to play, and sometimes she would just sit in the shade and tell me stories.
Sometimes Jantu also used folktales to explain things to me. Not all children grow up with one war being fought after another, she said. In other places, and even in Cambodia during peacetime, children grew up without seeing a single soldier! Then why are there all these different armies fighting each other now, I asked. Even on the Border, there were separate military base camps made up of Khmer Rouge soldiers, Khmer Serei soldiers, Khmer People's National Liberation soldiers, not to mention the Vietnamese soldiers to the east and the Thai soldiers to the west – all fighting one another. None of it made any sense to me.
"Don't you know the story about the family of deaf men?" Jantu answered, a mischievous gleam in her eye. Four deaf brothers, she said, were living together quite happily until a crocodile wandered into their house.
The oldest deaf brother shouted out a warning, pointing to the crocodile.
The second deaf brother, seeing his elder brother with the crocodile, thought they were going to attack him, and grabbed a stick to defend himself.
The third deaf brother thought the other two were planning to kill him, snatched up a knife, and brandished it around.
When the fourth deaf brother saw his brothers waving their weapons at the crocodile, he threw a rock at it. The rock bounced off the crocodile's hide and hit one of the brothers. Within seconds, all four deaf brothers were screaming and fighting each other as the crocodile slipped out the door.
"You see?" Jantu concluded with a shrug. "The leaders of Cambodia are just like those four brothers, fighting among themselves because they cannot hear one another."
Is the story Jantu tells about events that really happened in the war?
a.
Yes; many brothers warred against each other.
b.
No; the story is used to show that wars can be caused when the sides refuse to listen to one another.
c.
Yes; folktales are often based on real events.
d.
No; she made up the story to entertain Minfong Ho.
6.
"The Ozone Layer"
The sun is our source of life. However, along with heat and light, the sun gives off some rays that can damage living things. These harmful rays, called ultraviolet or UV radiation, can cause sunburn and even skin cancer. They weaken the immune systems of people and animals, increasing the chances that they will become sick. They cause plants to stop making new seeds.
Ozone is a thin layer of gas in the earth's atmosphere that shields us from most of the harmful rays of the sun. Scientists have known since the 1970s that there was sometimes a hole in the layer of ozone that covers the earth. The hole in the ozone layer appeared over Antarctica for a short time each year and then closed up. By the mid-1980s scientists learned that the hole was growing. Through tests and experiments, they showed that chemical compounds called chlorofluorcarbons (CFCs) were causing the problem in the ozone layer. CFCs rise up to the stratosphere through evaporation. There, the strong UV rays of the sun cause the CFCs to change into ozone-eating particles.
In the 1980s, CFCs were used to cool the air in air conditioners and refrigerators. They were used in plastic foam boxes for food products. CFCs were also used in aerosol cans containing these products: hairsprays, deodorants, cleaning liquids, and shaving creams.
In 1990 officials from ninety-three countries met in Canada and agreed to stop making and using many of these damaging chemicals. Some people started using pump sprays rather than aerosols and refused to buy foam packaging made with CFCs. Scientists continue to search for substitute chemicals that can do the jobs that CFCs have done in the past. For example, aerosol cans in the United States now use other chemicals, not CFCs, to cause products to spray from the can. Many countries have used laws about making or using CFCs. By working together, scientists, governments, manufacturers, and consumers can protect the ozone layer.
Which of the sentences below is an opinion?
a.
The sun gives off ultraviolet light.
b.
CFCs damage the ozone layer.
c.
By working together, we can protect the ozone layer.
d.
The ozone layer protects Earth from ultraviolet rays.
7.
"Kids from Chicago's Cabrini Green Learn Urban Farming in Arkansas"
PERRYSVILLE, Ark.—No overalls or straw hats in this crowd.
Fresh from Chicago's Cabrini Green housing complex and another development in Milwaukee, a dozen kids are visiting Arkansas to learn how to become inner-city farmers.
Growing cucumbers may keep 16-year-old Helen Marshbanks from joining a gang. Raising catfish under an apartment window sill may put more food on the table for the family of 14-year-old Darius Moore.
For 19-year-old Eric Brown, urban farming is a "cool" complement to playing basketball and watching television. "I want to be a writer when I grow up," Brown said. "But this thing, yeah, it's been real cool."
"For me, doing these kinds of projects has kept me out of trouble and out of gangs that are in my neighborhood," Marshbanks said Monday.
All are at a four-day, inner-city farming seminar at the Heifer International Project, an international grassroots organization.
The seminar, held on Heifer's 1,100-acre ranch in central Arkansas, provides some of the budding farmers their first time out of the city. They stay at the "Heifer Hilton"—a barn that sleeps about two dozen.
The seminar aims to show how to boost inner-city crops and expand into rooftop beekeeping, catfish harvesting, worm composting, goat-cheese making, and organic farming.
"We feel really good about doing this," Moore said. "There are a lot of people who can't afford things in our neighborhood. I think when people see what we're doing, they'll want to get involved, too."
Learning professional techniques could help the gardening projects already running and encourage donors to keep them afloat, Marshbanks said.
"We can see what a difference it's made in our neighborhood," she said. "It makes people happy."
Which of the following is a statement of fact?
a.
Heifer International Project makes a difference.
b.
Heifer International Project is a grassroots organization.
c.
Heifer International Project keeps kids out of gangs.
d.
Heifer International Project is successful.
8.
"Absolute Location"
Do you know how ships measured their speed long ago? Do you know why a ship's speed is given today in knots rather than miles per hour or kilometers per hour?
Long ago, each ship carried a piece of wood fastened to a rope. The rope had knots tied in it. Each knot was a certain distance from the next. To measure the ship's speed, the piece of wood was thrown overboard. It pulled the rope out behind it. The faster the ship was going, the faster the rope went out. Someone counted how many knots passed over the side of the ship in a certain length of time. If seven knots were pulled out, the ship was said to be traveling at a speed of seven knots. Today, one knot is about 1.15 miles per hour.
Ships long ago had to keep track of their speed on long voyages, because they had no other way to tell how far they had traveled. Ships often became lost. For example, a storm might blow them far away from where they wanted to go.
What people needed was a way to tell exactly where they were on the earth's surface – their absolute location. They also needed to be able to find their way to any other absolute location.
What they needed was a grid system that covered the entire earth. You know that a grid is made up of two sets of lines that cross each other. A grid system that covered the whole earth would let anyone find any location on Earth. We have such a grid today. We call it latitude and longitude.
What is your absolute position right now?
a.
your distance from home
b.
your from the playground
c.
your distance and direction from the nearest pizza shop
d.
the exact latitude and longitude of where you are now
9.
"Modern Mystery, Ancient Killer"
The American Southwest, with its blazing sun and wide open spaces, seems an unlikely place for an outbreak of deadly disease. Epidemics have traditionally favored crowded conditions associated with the nation's inner cities. Yet, mysterious death has struck the desert more than once over time. One such case began in May 1981, in the small town of Cuba, New Mexico.
Twenty-eight-year-old Jimmy Bistie had a sore throat. Just trying to swallow brought tears to his eyes. Jimmy, a Navajo, had consulted several chanters, or medicine men, about his problem. No one had been able to help. With a throbbing head and aching muscles, he then turned to the Cuba Health Center as a last resort.
The physician's assistant who examined Jimmy was not overly concerned. Diagnosing the illness as a bad case of strep throat, he gave Jimmy penicillin and aspirin and sent him home with orders to rest.
But Jimmy's condition went from bad to worse in spite of the medication. His temperature shot up. A deep, persistent cough tore at his chest and made his head throb harder than ever. He had trouble getting his breath. Alarmed, he began to notice flecks of blood in his handkerchief after each coughing attack.
Convinced that the "white man's medicine" would never cure her son, Jimmy's mother insisted that he visit another chanter. With his brother driving, Jimmy and his mother and sister set off to find a medicine man who lived on the Navajo Reservation in the northwestern part of the state.Hours later, the long trip over the hot, dry hills ended in failure. The medicine man could not be found. Jimmy was now burning with fever, and the coughing was making it almost impossible for him to breathe. Badly frightened, his family rushed him to the Gallup Indian Medical Center.
Jimmy was carried into the emergency room, where Dr. Molly Ettenger and her staff began working to save his life. Within minutes, however, Jimmy lost consciousness, and then his heart stopped beating. While a nurse gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, he was hooked to a respirator that helped him breathe. For another day, he held on to life. Then, the end came.
What had killed Jimmy Bistie?
The technicians in the Gallup lab were the first to find the answer. After examining samples of fluid from Jimmy's lungs, they hurried to telephone Dr. Ettenger. Black Death had struck in New Mexico. Jimmie Bistie had died of plague.
To most Americans, the word "plague" brings images of an ancient epidemic, as far removed from modern life as gloomy castles and knights in shining armor. But, in the late Middle Ages, plague was an all-too-real threat to Europeans. Between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, almost half the population of that continent was wiped out by the Black Death, so named because of blood spots under the skin that turned black.
The Black Death
In 1894, Dr. Alexandre E. J. Yersin isolated and described the cause of plague – bacteria carried by the common flea. In most cases, plague entered the body when a flea injected the bacteria through the victim's skin. Early plague epidemics could have been controlled by the elimination of rats and the infected fleas they carried. Dr Ettenger knew that this illness from the past was no stranger to the United States. It had struck its first blow in 1900, when ships carrying plague infected rats arrived in San Francisco from Hong Kong and Hawaii.
Soon after, the disease moved into the American countryside. There, infected fleas found new hosts: squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits and prairie dogs. By 1949, New Mexico, with its high population of wild rodents, led all states in number of reported cases of plague.
An ordinary case of plague wasn't unheard of in Gallup, but Jimmy Bistie's case was anything but ordinary. His strep throat had masked the early symptoms of the disease. More importantly, Jimmy had not developed "bubonic" plague, in which the bacteria attacks the lymphatic system, producing large swellings, or "buboes," in the armpit or groin.
Jimmy had come down with pneumonic plague, possibly the world's most infectious and deadly form of pneumonia. The bacteria had invaded his lungs. During the last days of his life, with each breath and cough, Jimmy has sprayed with killer germs everyone crossing his path.
Why do epidemics occur more often in inner cities than in rural areas?
a.
Poor people are more likely to spread diseases.
b.
Contagious diseases are spread more easily in crowded conditions.
c.
Epidemics often start on subways.
d.
Inner cities have a lot of rodents.
10.
"Time Zones"
Would you like to be able to fly through space at over 1000 miles per hour? Well, you are—right this minute. The earth rotates on its axis at about 1000 miles per hour at the Equator, carrying you with it. Each hour your spot on the earth travels 15 degrees of longitude toward the east.
You may think that you do not notice any sign of your speedy trip, but you do. Every day you see the sun march across the sky. The sun is not actually moving, of course. The earth is turning from the west to east. That is why the sun comes up in the east and sets in the west.
It takes the earth 24 hours to rotate on its axis once. Imagine that the sun has just come up. In one hour the sun will be higher in the sky. With each hour that passes, the sun will rise higher until noon. Then it will become lower, until finally it sinks out of sight.
Imagine that you have a friend who lives 1000 miles west of you. When the sun has been up for one hour where you live, it will just be coming up where your friend lives. You have another friend who lives 1000 miles east of you. When the sun has been up for one hour where you live, it will have been up for two hours at your friend's house in the east.
People have used the sun to tell time for many years. How high the sun is in the sky can tell us how long it has been since sunrise, and how long it is until sunset. When the sun is at its highest point in the sky, it is noon. Remember your two friends to the east and west of you? When it is noon where you are, it is an hour past noon where you friend to the east lives. It is an hour before noon at your friend's house to the west.
The earth is divided into 24 parts for keeping time. We call each division of the earth a time zone. Every place on the earth within a time zone has the same time as every other place in that zone.
Before we had time zones, every town kept its own time. Because of the earth's rotation, noon came at different times for towns even 40 or 50 miles east or west of each other. As long as travel was slow, this was not a problem. But with the coming of railroads, the differing times became a big problem. Trying to tell people when trains would arrive and leave was almost impossible when the clocks in every town were set at a different local time.
Time zones were set up to solve this problem. Time zones are about 1000 miles across from east to west at the Equator. Time zones become narrower as you move toward the Poles. Only four time zones are needed to cover the entire continental United States. These four time zones are called the Eastern Time Zone, the Central Time Zone, the Mountain Time Zone, and the Pacific Time Zone. In some cases the time zones follow the boundaries of states or countries rather than the lines of longitude.
People who travel across time zones must keep track of time. Whenever you cross a time zone going east, the time becomes one hour later. You must set your watch ahead one hour. Whenever you cross a time zone going west, the time becomes one hour earlier. You must set your watch back one hour.
What evidence do we have of the earth's rotation?
a.
the sunrise in the east
b.
the tides
c.
the time of day
d.
we have no evidence
