Florida Assessment of Student Thinking English Language Arts Reading Grade 10

Memorandum. To all staff in Facilities and Records. From Nolan Greer, Office of Green Habits. Subject: Our paper-saving triumph.

Please congratulate the department. We eliminated the print run of the March occupancy report. Not one of those pages touched the office copier. The copier slept. I have already drafted the plaque.

The report is still twelve pages. It went by email to the forty people on the standing list, and each of them printed a personal copy for the Tuesday folder. People say printing at a desk feels more responsible because the machine is smaller.

The break-room poster will keep saying we saved a forest's worth of paper. I am leaving any number off that poster. A number would crowd the celebration. Calling the emails a paper savings praises a savings the desk printers already undid.

Admitted, for the file: forty copies of twelve pages is 480 pages.

I am asking the council to restore the Reed Bend marsh, and I will not pretend the work is free of inconvenience. For one season the shortcut along the old ditch will be closed while the fill comes out and the native plants go in. People who cut across to the bus will use the paved lane instead. That walk is longer. I am counting it as a cost, not waving it away.

Yesterday's letter treats the closure as if it were the town shutting down. A path is one route. The town is the stores, the school, the bus, the houses, and the other ways of moving among them. Closing a shortcut is not the same thing as closing the town. The analogy takes the feeling of a shutdown and spends it on a single trail.

The season of work is for a marsh that holds storm water instead of sending it across Harbor Street. The path comes back when the planting is stable. The town does not have to disappear in order for the ditch to stop being a ditch.

I was asked to speak because a list put my name first. I am not going to pretend that a list is the same thing as a person, and I am not going to say that one person is the meaning of this class. This speech does not name a valedictorian. I will not rank the class, and I will not rank myself above you.

The thanks I will give has one name in it. Ms. Pellier taught me a habit of revising. On every draft she wrote the same question in the margin: what did you assume the reader already knew? I rewrote until that assumption was explained or taken out. The habit is what I am carrying out of this building. A habit does not need a rank, and it does not need anyone else to stand lower so that I can stand here.

If you came for a winner, the school already printed one on a program I am choosing not to read aloud. The moral I can offer is the margin note, not the list. I am refusing to repeat a sorting that was finished before we sat down.

The cells in a bacterial group are not copies of one another. Before a medicine arrives, they already vary. Most do not survive the medicine. A few already carry a trait that lets them survive it. The medicine did not produce those few. They were already there.

The cells that survive are the ones that continue. When they divide, the new cells carry the trait the surviving cells already had. Later generations therefore include more of that surviving kind. The share of the group shifts toward the trait that survival left in place.

Nothing in this account says a single cell gained the trait by trying, the way a story about use and disuse would have it. Use and disuse is the wrong story here. The variation came first. The change a reader can point to is in the makeup of the generations that followed, not in a cell deciding to adapt.

Rafi turned the new key and heard the shed lock take it. Rain had started against the roof. Rafi hung the key on the kitchen hook and kept a hand on the door a moment, as if the click still needed a witness.

That morning, before the rain, the hardware shop had cut the key from the worn one an uncle kept on a nail. The clerk filed the teeth while metal dust gathered on the counter. "It will fit that lock and no other," the clerk said. Rafi paid, put the new key in a coat, and walked home. The old key stayed in the uncle's jar, where the uncle had asked that it be left.

The lock was already shut by the time that morning is told. The filing and the click are the same key at two times. The story reaches the click first. The cutting is earlier, and the paragraph that tells it is a return to that morning, not a second locking.

The new kettle from Bramble and Co. is a cheerful little drum. It whistles a note that would embarrass a songbird, and the handle stayed cool while I poured three cups. I had planned to spend this review on the whistle.

The box also says the kettle "meets the updated safety standard." I like a sentence that sounds as if the worrying has already been done. I turned the box over, looking for the year that would make the sentence specific.

The year is not there. The phrase names a standard and does not date it. An updated standard from an unnamed year is a claim with the calendar torn off. I stopped enjoying the whistle. A company that can print a bird-call on the lid can print a year on the flap, and the missing year is the part I now trust least. The kettle is still on my counter. The sentence on the box is what turned the review sharp.

In March 1928, a two-room station above a shoe-repair shop in Brant had the evening hour. Helen Marek kept a clock beside the microphone and a pencil list of what that hour owed the town.

At 6:05 she read the weather desk's storm warning. High wind was expected after 8, and small boats were to stay off the lake. She did not smile the warning into something friendly. She read it once, slowly, and left a pause so a listener could write the time down.

At 6:07 she read the cereal advertisement sold for that slot, a paid spot for Hearth Flakes. The advertisement praised a flake for staying crisp in milk. It moved at a cheerful pace and ended with the sponsor's name. It said nothing about wind, boats, or the lake.

A neighbor who had heard both told Helen the whole hour was "just selling." Helen tapped the clock. The warning at 6:05 was a notice from the weather desk. The cereal lines at 6:07 were the paid spot. Using one microphone does not make those two readings the same kind of sentence.

The town sign rule is short. A shop sign may be 4 feet tall, except a shop on a corner lot may use 6 feet. The exception belongs to the lot, not to a shopkeeper's preference for a taller board.

The clerk's sheet records two applications. Pellum's Hardware is on a middle lot, not a corner. Its proposed sign is 5 feet. Five is taller than 4, and a middle lot has no exception, so the 5-foot sign does not fit. Ober Books is on a corner lot. Its proposed sign is 6 feet. The exception allows 6 feet on a corner lot, so the 6-foot sign fits.

Almost 4 is not what the middle-lot line says. A corner, therefore any height, is not what the exception says. The rule is a 4-foot limit plus one stated exception, and both applications above are decided by those words.

The bus-stop advertisement for Orchard Sip says the drink is "practically juice." The word practically is the advertisement's word. It suggests the drink is close enough to juice that a careful difference would be fussy.

The bottle's label, printed under the ingredient list, says the drink is 10 percent juice. Ten percent is the label's figure. It is a measured share, not a shrug. A drink that is 10 percent juice is mostly something else.

The two sentences can be on the same street and still not be the same claim. Practically offers a feeling of nearness. Ten percent offers a quantity. A reader who treats the advertisement as if it had said 10 percent is borrowing a number the advertisement never printed. A reader who treats the label as if it had said practically juice is borrowing a shrug the label never used.

The key on the blue ring opens the hall closet and stops there. Inez tried it in the front door, the kitchen door, and the attic latch. Each of those refused it. Only the closet lock turned.

Mateo, home from a long trip, held the key up and said, "This is the whole house." He was talking about the winters stored in that closet: the coats, the boots, the box of letters. The sentence was a way of speaking. The metal was a closet key.

He may keep the feeling. The fact stays measurable. A key that fits one closet is a key to that closet. Calling it the whole house does not add doors. When Inez hung it back on the blue ring, three locks still refused it, and the closet still accepted it.

A research note from the bottling company begins with a count that is real. On a Saturday, a clerk asked nine shoppers at the Mercer Avenue store which bottle shape they preferred. Seven chose the new bottle. Two chose the old one.

The note then says, "The state prefers the new bottle." The state did not stand in that aisle. Nine people at one store are not the state. Seven out of nine is a result inside that small group at one store. It can describe those nine answers. It cannot be stretched, by a change of noun, into a preference held by the state.

The error is in the leap, not in the arithmetic of seven and two. A larger sample, taken in more than one store, might later support a wider sentence. This note does not contain that sample. Its honest sentence stops at the nine shoppers. The word state is doing work the count never authorized.

The excerpt comes from The Folded Lease, a short play set in a shop after hours. Ren has placed a pen on the lease.

REN: If you agree, the lease is settled. Sign under your name.

JULES: I agree.

(Jules turns away from the table. The pen stays where Ren set it down. Jules does not sign.)

REN: Then sign.

JULES: I said the words you wanted.

The spoken line is "I agree." The stage direction undercuts it: Jules turns away and does not sign. Speech and action part company. A reader who keeps only the spoken line will think the lease is settled. The direction shows it is not. Here the direction is the more reliable report of what Jules does, because it shows the act, while the line only claims agreement.

In the essay that opens the town forum, local is defined before anyone uses it loosely. The essay says a source is local when it comes from within 10 miles of the town hall. Miles are the test. Fondness for a place is not.

Later in the forum, a speaker praises apples from Calder City as local fruit the town should be proud of. Calder City is 80 miles from the town hall. Under the essay's definition, that city is not local. Eighty miles is outside the 10-mile line, and pride does not move the line.

The speaker may still argue that the apples are worth buying. That would be a different claim, about quality or about trade. It would not be the claim the essay's word local can carry. Using the word for Calder City borrows a definition the essay already spent on a shorter distance.

Earth's orbit is not a perfect circle, so the distance from the sun changes during the year. Earth is closest to the sun in January. In July the distance is greater.

A northern winter still happens in January. The cause is tilt, not distance. In that month the Northern Hemisphere leans away from the sun. Sunlight reaches it at a lower angle and for fewer hours. Less direct light warms that hemisphere less, even though the planet is at its nearer point in January.

Distance is a fact about the whole planet at one time, so it cannot by itself make one hemisphere cold and the other warm. In the same January, the Southern Hemisphere leans toward the sun and has its warmer part of the year. If nearer distance were what made a hemisphere warm, north and south would warm together. They do not. Tilt sets them opposite each other. If distance caused the northern cold, the north would be in its warm part of the year when Earth is nearest. January is that nearest month, and the north is in winter then. Nearness and the northern winter share January. They are not the same cause.

Two texts ran beside each other after the pier went dark. They are not the same kind of sentence.

News note, filed by the harbor desk at 9:20 p.m.: The lights on the public pier failed at 9. Walkers used phones to find the ramp. The harbormaster confirmed the outage and said crews would look at the line in the morning. This note records that the lights failed at 9. It does not ask the town to spend money.

Editorial, printed beside the note the next day: The pier is a public edge, and the town should fund the repairs in this month's budget instead of waiting. The council already has a maintenance fund it has been slow to open. This editorial asks for that funding. It does not establish the clock time of the outage.

A report and a request can sit side by side and stay different. The lights failed at 9 is news. The town should fund the repairs is the editorial. The time can be checked against the harbormaster's confirmation. The funding request stands or falls as an argument about the budget, not as a clock.

Ada Sen's note sits under a single line of a poem she is bringing into English. The source line, in her gloss, mentions wind and then shutters broken along the lane. She had drafted the wind as a breeze. She changed it to storm.

The change is tied to the shutters. A breeze, in the note's account, does not break shutters along a lane. Broken shutters are evidence of a wind strong enough to do damage. Storm is the English word she uses to carry that evidence. Breeze would keep the sentence gentle and drop the damage the source line includes.

She writes that another translator might prefer the sound of breeze, and that preference is not her reason. "If the shutters were only tapping, I would have kept breeze," the note says. "They are broken. The word has to be able to break them." The choice is accountable to the source line, not to taste alone.

The charter of the North Lane Camera Club states the voting rule in one sentence. A vote passes when more than half of the members present vote yes. Members who are absent are not counted in the number present. The rule uses the people in the room, not the full roster.

At the March meeting, 11 members were present and 4 were absent. Those 4 are outside the 11. Half of 11 is 5.5. More than half means greater than 5.5, so 6 yes votes pass, and 5 yes votes do not. The March motion received 6 yes votes and passed.

The April meeting had the same count in the room: 11 present, and 4 absent who were not added to the 11. The April motion received 5 yes votes and did not pass. A member who adds the absent people into the 11 is reading a different rule. The charter's half is taken from the members present. Six is a pass. Five is not.