North Carolina End-of-Grade Tests English Language Arts Grade 6

The model skiff on the library table at Reed Harbor School, in a harbor town on the North Carolina coast, is 6 inches long. A card under the hull says each inch stands for 3 feet. Students are told to use that scale to find the length of the real skiff the model copies. The model is a small copy. It is not the boat tied in the harbor.

The real length is the model length multiplied by the feet each inch stands for. Six times 3 is 18, so the real skiff is 18 feet long. The card prints that step on one line. Reading the 6 inches as 6 feet skips the scale. Students who add the 6 and the 3 get 9. That sum is a wrong turn. The card never tells them to add, and 9 is not the real length.

Nia pointed at the ruler and said the skiff must be 6 feet long, because the model measured 6. Mr. Hale tapped the card. "Six is how long the model is in inches. Each inch stands for 3 feet. The real length is 18 feet." Nia's number matched the ruler. It did not match the scale.

A printed card beside the hallway dial at Maple Street Middle School, in a Piedmont city, explains the heater as a switch with two temperatures. The heater turns on at 64 degrees. The heater turns off at 68 degrees. The card lists no other on or off temperature. It tells readers to judge the room by those two marks.

Heat starts when the room falls to 64 degrees. The heater keeps running while the room warms past that mark. A room sitting at 66 has already passed the on mark and has not reached the off mark, so the heater is still on. Turning on is not saved for 68. The heater does not wait until 68 to turn on. Being warmer than 64 does not stop it. Only 68 turns it off.

A classmate told a friend that the heater stays off until the room reaches 68, then switches on. The card says the opposite about the start. The heater turns on at 64. It turns off at 68. At 66 it is still on, on the way from the start mark to the stop mark.

A ranger sheet for winter hikers at Glass Pond, in the North Carolina mountains, describes the ice on the water. A slab of that ice floats. The sheet states that ice floats because it is less dense than liquid water. Density compares how much mass is packed into a space. The same space of ice has less mass than that space of liquid water, so the liquid holds the slab up.

The sheet sets this reason apart from other words people reach for. Colder describes the temperature. Solid describes the state. Neither word explains the floating. A heavier slab of the same size would sink. This slab stays up because it is less dense, not because it is heavier than the water it pushes aside.

In the solid, the molecules leave more open space than they do in the liquid. That spacing is why the ice is less dense. The sheet's answer is the comparison: ice is less dense than liquid water.

The Friday bulletin for the Cedar Cross volunteer supper, in a town on the coastal plain, lists the peanuts for the weekend boil. The kitchen had 48 pounds of raw peanuts. Volunteers boiled 30 pounds for Saturday's supper. They boiled the other 18 pounds for Sunday's lunch. The bulletin says the raw supply was used up.

Thirty plus 18 is 48. Saturday's pot was the larger boil. Sunday's pot was smaller. A volunteer who says the kitchen boiled only 30 pounds is stopping at Saturday and leaving Sunday out. The bulletin does not call 30 the total.

Beside Saturday, the cook wrote "short pot." In this bulletin, short pot means a boil under the 36 pounds the Saturday supper usually serves. Saturday's 30 is 6 pounds under 36. Sunday's lunch expects only 16 pounds, and 18 is 2 pounds over that plan, so the cook did not write short pot beside Sunday. The phrase belongs to the Saturday gap, not to both days.

A family sheet for the drive from Millboro, in the Piedmont, to a farm in the foothills sets two routes side by side. The highway route is 40 miles and takes about 45 minutes. The river road is 28 miles and takes about 70 minutes. Miles tell how far the car travels. Minutes tell how long the trip takes. The sheet prints both so a driver will not treat them as one fact.

The river road is the shorter distance and the longer time. The highway is farther and faster. A cousin named Belle said, "I will take the river road because fewer miles means I will arrive sooner." The sheet does not say that. Twenty-eight miles on curves and a slow one-lane bridge can take longer than 40 miles on the highway. Distance and time answer different questions.

The middle of the sheet is a comparison. It holds the two routes next to each other on miles, then on minutes. It does not narrate one drive from the driveway to the farm gate. A driver who wants fewer miles chooses the river road. A driver who wants the shorter time chooses the highway. The sheet gives both facts and lets the goal decide.

At the Saturday market in a Blue Ridge town, Imani saw a small dog under the peach table. No one was holding a leash. She wanted to take the dog home. Her aunt had said the apartment allowed one pet, and the dog leaned on her shoe.

Then she turned the collar and found a metal tag with a phone number and the name Pebble. The tag was evidence that someone was already looking. Wanting the dog did not erase the number. Imani borrowed the peach seller's phone and called.

A man two stalls away answered and hurried over, calling "Pebble." The dog left Imani's shoe and went to him. Her wish had been real. The tag was more decisive than the wish. She walked back to her aunt without the dog, and she kept the seller's phone only long enough to return it.

Oak Ward Center, in a large Piedmont city, posts a Saturday board for the pool and the gym. Lap swim runs from 8:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and is limited to adults. Family swim runs from 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The board says a child under 12 must be with an adult during family swim. The center stays open until 5:00 p.m. for the gym, which does not require a pool pass.

Sofia is 11. She comes with her father at 10:20 a.m. She may swim then because family swim is underway and an adult is with her. She may not enter lap swim, because that block is for adults and she is not an adult. If she arrives at 1:00 p.m., family swim is over. She can still use the gym until 5:00, because the gym hours are not the pool hours.

A friend tells Sofia that the whole center closes when lap swim ends at 9:30 a.m. The board separates the blocks. Lap swim, family swim, and the gym have different times and different rules. Ending one block does not close the building.

A student reporter at a middle school in Durham explains why the arts club painted a mural on the wall that faces the bus stop. The club wanted riders who wait there to see the school's river and pine trees, which many students pass without noticing. The reporter quotes the club president: "We painted the wait, not the highway."

The mural does not include ads. The wall belongs to the school. A teacher had suggested the back of the gym, where few people stand. The club rejected that wall because the audience would be smaller. The article's job is to explain the choice of wall.

Readers who want a painting lesson will not find one. The reporter never lists colors, tools, or steps. The piece stays with the audience at the stop and with the wall the club turned down. The river and the pines are the view the mural holds up for people who are already waiting.

A panel at a visitor shed on a barrier island of the Outer Banks explains the two shores. The ocean side receives swell from the Atlantic. The island stands between that swell and the sound. The panel says the sound side misses those long waves because the island blocks the ocean swell. It does not say the Moon pulls more gently on the sound.

When a strong wind blows from the west, the sound can still kick up short, steep waves. The panel separates that case from the usual ocean swell. Blocking the Atlantic waves is the reason the sound side misses the long ocean rollers. A west wind is a different cause, and it can roughen the sound even while the island keeps those rollers out.

A visitor said the sound is calm because it is always shallow and the Moon is nearer. The panel disagrees with that cause. The cause it names for the missing rollers is the island, not the Moon. Shallow water appears only as a separate fact about some flats. It is not the panel's reason that the long ocean waves fail to reach the sound shore.

At a pottery shop near Seagrove, the shelf of fresh clay was nearly empty. Ms. Ward said the clay was scarce. In her sentence, scarce means a small supply that is hard to replace this month, not a supply that is plentiful.

She worked at the wheel with deliberate hands. Deliberate here means careful and unhurried. A customer urged her to rush a second bowl. She shook her head. The first bowl was promised to a neighbor before the clay ran low. She would finish that one and stop.

By late afternoon she was weary, so tired that she rolled her shoulders between pulls of the wheel. Weariness did not make her break the promise, and it did not make her start the extra bowl. When the neighbor's bowl was done, she covered the wheel. The scarce clay, not a change of mind, set the limit. The customer who heard scarce as plentiful had reversed the word.

The student newspaper at a foothills middle school prints an interview with Ranger Otis, who walks a loop in Upland Forest. The interviewer asks what he carries, and why.

Ranger Otis says, "A paper map, even though my radio works most days. Last month the radio faded in a hollow. The map still showed the loop. I also carry a whistle. One short blast means I need the group to stop. It does not mean the trail is closed. On Tuesday a hiker thought the blast meant go home. I had only wanted the line to wait while a branch was moved."

The interviewer asks what he does not carry. He answers, "I do not carry the weather for the hikers. If the sky is turning, I say so, and each person decides. My job on that walk is the trail and the group that signed in, not the whole county."

Last spring a coastal town planted marsh grass along a bare bend of Reed Creek. Before the planting, boat wakes hit the open soil, and the bank crumbled into the water. Children who fished there said the edge moved back a little every month.

After the grass filled in, the same wakes still arrived, but the stems slowed the water. Less soil washed off that bend. The creek did not stop flowing, and the boats did not disappear. The change was at the bank, where the water lost some of its force.

A letter to the paper said the grass was planted so people could harvest it for hay. The town's notice says otherwise. The notice gives one purpose: hold the bank by slowing the water. A bird that hunts in the new stems is a sight the notice mentions, not the reason for the planting. A reader who keeps the letter's purpose will miss the purpose the notice states.

Malik had entered the fall fiddle contest at the county fair in the foothills. When his turn came, the bow froze an inch above the string. The room was quiet enough that he could hear the buzz of the lights. He knew the tune. He could not start it.

His cousin Dee stood at the side of the stage, out of the judges' row. She had not entered. She hummed the first four notes, soft enough that the judges' table did not look up. The sound put the tune back in Malik's hands. He played the rest himself and sat down to applause.

Afterward a neighbor said, "You did that all alone." Malik nodded. The nod did not change what had happened on the stage. Dee did not play the piece for him. She started him. A reader who keeps only the neighbor's sentence will miss the help the story has already shown.

The day-use brochure for Loblolly Woods, a public forest on the coastal plain, spends its first paragraph on parking. The lot has 40 spaces. On Saturdays those spaces are often full by 10:00 a.m. On Wednesday mornings the brochure says visitors usually find open spaces. Those sentences are there to steer families toward weekdays.

The second paragraph is a rule, not a suggestion. Cook fires are allowed only in the metal rings. A fire outside a ring is not allowed. The brochure does not tell anyone how to start a fire. It states where a fire may be. Picnics without any fire are welcome at the shaded tables.

The last paragraph tells what the brochure is not doing. It is not a trail map. It is not a list of every bird. Its job is the visit plan: come when the lot still has room, and keep any fire inside a ring. A reader who wants mileages will need a different sheet.

The school paper at a middle school in the Triad prints two letters about the spring fair. A line above them says both writers want the fair to happen. They disagree about the place.

Lena writes, "Move the fair into the gym. Last April, rain canceled the outdoor games after we had already set them up. I am not asking to cancel the fair. I am asking to change the place so one storm cannot end the games."

Omar writes, "Keep the fair on the field. The gym holds 200 people. Last year's fair drew 350. Putting 350 people into a room for 200 would leave people outside anyway. Rain is a risk. A room that is too small is a sure squeeze. I also am not asking to cancel the fair."

Fog had poured into Crow Gap, an overlook in the mountains. From the rail, the valley looked erased. In this description, erased means hidden from sight. The land was still there. The fog had covered the view.

Marcus stood rooted to the rail. Rooted here means he stayed in one spot, unwilling to leave yet. His sister, Alix, tugged his sleeve. "The valley is gone. We should get back in the car." He said the valley was only covered, and he wanted to wait.

They waited. The fog thinned in one band, and a slice of fields showed, then closed again. The wait had not cleared the whole valley. It had proved his word "covered" for a moment. They left when the band closed, with that slice seen and the rest still hidden.

Many students in a rural district on the coastal plain live near a crossroads 18 miles from the branch library. After school, a lot of them have no ride into town. The library's answer is a bookmobile that stops at the crossroads on Tuesdays from 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

The stop is for borrowing and returning books. Holds that were placed earlier can be picked up there. The bookmobile does not replace the branch. A student who needs a computer or a meeting room still goes to the branch. Those errands still face the 18 miles. The van shortens the trip only for books.

The visit lasts 90 minutes. From 3:30 to 5:00 is an hour and a half. A student who arrives at 5:10 p.m. has missed the stop. The branch does not send the van back for one late arrival. A poster that said the bookmobile stayed all evening would be a different plan. This poster gives a start and an end.