California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress Reading Grade 7

At the night market, a child pointed at the thin moon and asked why it looked bitten. The volunteer from the harbor planetarium answered with light. The moon does not shine by itself. The bright curve is sunlight falling on the part of the moon that faces the sun. The rest of the face we see is dark because sunlight is not reaching it.

The volunteer separated that shape from Earth's shadow. Earth's shadow falls across the moon only when Earth lines up between the sun and the moon. That event is a lunar eclipse, and it is rare. A crescent appears on many ordinary nights, when Earth is not blocking the sunlight on its way to the moon. The dark portion is the moon's unlit face, not a shadow cast by Earth.

The card she handed the child puts the cause in one sentence: a crescent is sunlight on part of the moon. The back of the card names the lunar eclipse only to set it aside. A rare shadow across the moon does not explain a curve people can see often.

On the ferry dock, pale moths rested on pale canvas boat covers, where gulls had trouble picking them out. Darker moths were already in that population. They were fewer at first, and the pale canvas made them easier to see. When the crew replaced the covers with black tarps, the pale moths stood out and the darker moths were harder to find. Gulls ate more of the moths they could see.

What changed afterward was which moths left young, not the wings of any one moth. A pale moth did not turn dark by trying to match a tarp. A dark moth did not decide to become hidden. Natural selection did not paint an individual a new color. The darker coloring was a variation that was already present, and more of those moths lived long enough to lay eggs while the tarps stayed black.

The dock journal's caption states the point in few words: the variation was already present. The page counts pale moths and dark moths across three summers. It does not show one moth rewriting its own color. The gulls did the selecting by what they could see. The journal does not describe anyone directing the moths.

The seventh-grade editorial asks the office to move the first bell from 8:10 to 8:25. On Wednesday the writer stood in the east hall and counted. At 8:05, 41 of the 60 students who ride the early bus were still in that hall, coats half off, not yet at their lockers.

The editorial calls 41 a snapshot. In this piece, a snapshot is one hallway at one minute. It is not a count of the whole school, and it is not a prediction about Thursday. The writer places that limit in the second paragraph, before the request, so the later ask will not be read as a promise about every student.

A clerk had said a later bell would only make students linger. The editorial answers with the Wednesday count: the hall was already full of early-bus students who had not reached their lockers when the 8:10 bell was about to ring. The piece asks for 8:25. It does not claim the extra minutes would empty the hall or end every late arrival.

Ms. Ortega's art-room note recommends Shelf Ash for bowls that are still soft. She writes that a drying shelf must stay true. In this note, true means straight and level. It does not mean honest. A shelf that twists is not true, even if the room already owns it.

For seven days she kept the same number of soft bowls on Shelf Pine and on Shelf Ash. Pine twisted. Two bowls slid to the low end and cracked. Ash stayed true, and the bowls on it were whole at the end of the week. Those cracked bowls are her evidence. She does not say Pine is useless for jars of brushes.

She also writes what the week cannot show. One week is not every season, and a heavier load might bend Ash too. She puts that limit after the evidence and before the last line, which still chooses Ash for these soft bowls. The limit holds the claim to the week she watched.

The ferry card says the boat will stand at Pier 4 at 3:40. On this card, stand means the boat will stop and take riders. It does not mean passengers should get on their feet, and it does not mean the boat will refuse the dock.

Jules read stand as a command to stay upright. He remained on his feet by the snack window and watched the boat come in. The boat stood at the pier, boarded the people waiting there, and left him at the window. His posture was fine. His reading of the card was not.

The next line gives the departure as 3:45. Those five minutes are the wait at the pier, not a lesson in how to hold one's body. The card puts the stop first and the leaving time second. Reading stand as a body position spends a schedule word on the wrong meaning, and Jules met the boat as a spectator.

The review of the gym mural likes the mood. The reviewer writes that the rust color feels restless, as if the wall were about to shift. That sentence is a judgment. Another viewer can look at the same rust and call it calm. A feeling of restlessness records one response. It does not become a fact about the paint.

A different sentence in the review can be checked. The painter's note, quoted there, says the mural uses only rust, cream, and black. A person can stand in the gym, look at the wall, and test that list. The three colors are on the wall whether anyone finds the rust restless.

The review keeps the judgment and the checkable sentence in different paragraphs. The first paragraph is the mood. The second is the list a viewer can test. The reviewer does this so a feeling will not be mistaken for a count of colors.

The block flier opens by printing Mr. Dahl's objection in full. He wrote that a lid on the shared rain cistern would be a lock on a bucket, and that neighbors should be able to reach the rain. The flier does not shorten his sentence or tuck it into a footnote.

The answer uses the October skim log: neighbors lifted 14 buckets of leaves out of the cistern that month. A September photo shows a child seated on the open rim, feet toward the water. The flier says a latched lid still opens for neighbors who want water. What it blocks is debris, and a rim that invites sitting. Dahl's word lock treats the lid as the end of access. The flier says access stays.

The last lines ask the council to buy one lid this month. They do not claim the cistern will stay clean with nobody checking it. The flier is built as objection, then evidence, then a request smaller than a promise of perfect water.

The bulletin board holds two slips about the same robotics scrimmage. The upper slip, dated Tuesday, reads North Wharf 48, Visitors 31. The lower slip, dated Thursday and headed Correction, reads North Wharf 48, Visitors 41.

A student who trusts the upper slip because it sits higher is treating cork position as if it were the rule. The frame of the board prints the rule: a slip headed Correction replaces the score it names. Height on the board is not that rule. The heading and the later date are.

The team names match on both slips. What changed is the visitors' score, from 31 to 41. North Wharf is still ahead. After Thursday, 31 is a withdrawn figure. Repeating it in a retelling uses a number the board has already replaced.

The trail journal tells the next group to hold a bearing of 40 degrees from the split oak until the creek. In this journal, a bearing is a direction read from a compass. It is not a person's polite or stern manner, and it is not a metal part inside a wheel.

Last spring a hiker treated the word as a reminder to stay patient. He walked toward the louder water, which was the wrong fork, and met a fence instead of the creek. The journal had already given the direction. Patience did not supply the degrees he skipped.

The sentence order is the method. Find the split oak first. Then set the compass to 40 degrees. Then walk that direction until the creek. Starting from the sound of water replaces the method with a guess. The journal puts the landmark before the number so the number has a place to begin.

The barn journal notes that mud cups have been fixed under the same three eaves each April for four years. The cups are nests. The first paragraph is only that observation: same beams, same month, nests present. It does not yet say why the birds chose those beams.

The second paragraph offers a claim. The birds are returning to a site they use again, not arriving by a fresh accident each spring. The evidence inside the journal is the repeat itself: four Aprils, three eaves. The writer says a single year would not have been enough to support that claim.

The third paragraph limits the claim. The journal cannot show that the same individual birds came back. Nobody banded them. The sentence the notes can carry is that the site is reused. The sentence they cannot carry is that these exact birds remember the eaves. The order is observation, claim, then limit, so the claim cannot outrun the last paragraph.

Coach Ibarra asks the club to add a short Thursday practice. Her claim is narrow: the team needs time to practice a reply. In her talk, a reply is an answer spoken after the other side's point. It is not a note written down and passed the next day.

Her evidence is last month's two losses. In both rounds the speakers had prepared openings and had no practiced reply when the other team raised a new objection. She calls the losses examples of that gap. She says they do not prove that every future round would be won by adding Thursday.

She names a conflict before the vote. The gym is booked Thursday until 5. She wants 5:15 to 6:00, after that booking, so the request is not a demand to remove another club. The talk moves from the claim, to examples with a limit, to the scheduling conflict, and then to that small ask.

Lena's letter asks the council to repair the orchard fence rather than take it down. In April a gap opened beside the gate. After that, she counted 9 sets of deer tracks on the orchard side. On her weekly walks before the gap, that same path inside the gate had shown no deer tracks.

A council member had said the fence does nothing, because fruit still disappeared in earlier years. Lena answers that a fence with a gap and a fence that is closed are different tools. The tracks showed up when the gap did. Fruit lost in other years does not prove a closed fence was useless, and it does not erase the April count.

The letter runs in three steps: the April count, then the member's sentence, then the difference between a gap and a whole fence. Lena does not claim a repair will save every piece of fruit. She claims the opening explains the tracks she counted, and that removing the fence would widen the opening those tracks already use.

The parade guide says the paper lanterns lead. In this guide, lead means they go first. It does not mean a rope, a metal, or the person in charge of the whole night.

The next sentences give the order: lanterns, then the drum line, then the closing of Oak Street. A new helper read lead as the boss of the parade and waited for someone to start the night. The lantern carriers were already the start. Oak Street stays open until the drums have passed the bakery.

The guide defines lead in the first sentence and gives the street order in the second, so a helper can see which meaning is in use. Treating the street closing as the opening reverses the guide. The lanterns open the parade. The closed street is the last step, after the drums.

The caretaker's card at Hale House says the old well is 12 meters deep. She measured with a rope knotted every meter and lowered it until the knot at 12 touched the water. The card is the record of that measurement.

The souvenir bookmark in the gift shop says the well is 20 meters deep. The bookmark is a keepsake, a small object meant to be kept, not a second measurement. A reader who wants a depth the caretaker checked has to use the card. Twenty meters would describe a different well, or a story that grew past the rope.

Twelve and twenty are far enough apart to matter. Averaging them to 16 would invent a depth nobody measured. When the pages conflict, the house guide says to keep the card. The bookmark can still mark a page in a book. It cannot reset the well.

The field-day radio card says to end a message with the word clear. On this card, clear means the speaker is finished and has understood the last instruction. It does not mean the sky is cloudless, and it does not mean the channel has no rules.

Ben heard clear, decided the task was over, and left before he reported the supply count the coordinator had just requested. That request was the instruction he still owed. Clear was the word he was supposed to say after the count, not instead of it.

The card lists the order under the definition: hear the request, give the count, then say clear. Ben reversed the ending. The passage uses his afternoon to show what that order protects. A finished word spoken too early drops the count the rest of the day needed.

Dina's essay claims the band room always echoes. Her evidence is one recording made on Tuesday, when the chairs were empty and the doors were shut. The recording does sound live and bright. The essay puts that file in the first paragraph and the word always in the second.

The teacher's margin note says the recording supports a claim about that Tuesday. Empty chairs and shut doors are part of what was recorded. Always would include days when the chairs are full, the doors are open, or a rehearsal is loud. The file does not contain those days.

The note does not say the band room never echoes. It says one recording cannot carry the word always. The note asks Dina to shrink the claim to the conditions she captured, or to add recordings that match the wider word. The note is built as the evidence, then the word that overreaches, then the repair.

The town folder holds two accounts of the crack in the Brant Tower bell. The keeper's note is dated May 2. It says the bell rang whole on April 30 and showed a crack after the May 1 noon ringing. The keeper was in the tower that week. The folder calls the note contemporary. In this folder, contemporary means written at the time of the event. It does not mean written in a modern style.

The cousin's letter was written twenty years later. It says the crack was already there in the winter before May. The letter is detailed, and the cousin sounds sure. Detail and certainty are not the same thing as standing in the tower that week. The folder prints both pages. It does not remove the cousin's version.

The last paragraph states the rule the folder is using. When the accounts conflict about the date the crack appeared, prefer the contemporary note by the person who was there. The later letter can still show what the family remembered. It does not move the crack back into winter against the May 2 page. The folder gives both accounts first and the rule after, so the rule is visible as a choice about evidence.