Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System Reading Grade 6

The Wharf Museum in Gloucester asked our class to help design a label for a model punt. I expected to write about its length. The model measured five inches, and its scale meant each inch represented two feet. That calculation gave us a ten-foot boat, a neat number that fit on one line. Then the curator asked what our number would help a visitor understand.

I looked again at the model. Its paint had worn away near one end. A tiny seat crossed the hull. There was no figure sitting on it and no fishing basket, though a photograph beside the case showed both. My first label said the model was missing the things that made it useful.

My partner, Ellis, found the maker’s note in the archive folder. The model had been made to compare hull shapes. Its maker had not intended it as a complete scene of a fishing trip. The note used a word I had already written several times: useful. I put my label face down.

The curator brought three objects to the table: the model, the photograph, and a repaired wooden oar. She asked us to choose a question for each. Ellis chose how the hull was shaped. I chose how the person in the photograph sat while working. Another student asked where repeated use had worn the oar. We discovered that the three objects did not need to answer the same question.

Our new display label gave the model’s scale, named its maker’s purpose, and invited visitors to compare it with the photograph. It did not call the missing basket a mistake. For a test, we asked students from another class what they noticed. One studied the hull. Another asked why the photographer had stood so far away from the boat. That question was not in our draft.

At the final meeting, I turned over my first label. I had used missing as if I already knew what every object was supposed to do. I kept that sentence in my notebook, with a line through it. The model went back in the case, unpainted patch and all.

At Birch Lane School in Springfield, a student team was investigating the hallway heater before writing an explanation for the school paper. A maintenance card said that the heater switched on when the hall cooled to 60 degrees Fahrenheit and switched off after warming to 64. The team was not allowed to adjust the equipment. They could observe the display and read the maintenance log with the custodian.

Ada arrived at 8:10, when the display showed 62. A red indicator showed the heater running. She wrote, “At 62 degrees, the heater is on.” At 10:40, Ben stopped at the same display. It again showed 62, but the indicator was dark. He wrote that Ada must have copied the number incorrectly.

They brought the two entries to the custodian. She did not choose one child’s record over the other. She opened the log. Before Ada’s visit, the temperature had dropped to 60 and the heater had started. It was warming the hall through 62 toward 64. Before Ben’s visit, the temperature had reached 64 and the heater had stopped. The hall was cooling back through 62 toward its next start.

Ben suggested printing only the maintenance card. Ada said that readers might still ask what a 62-degree reading meant. They drew two arrows: one from 60 toward 64 and one returning from 64 toward 60. Beside each observation they added the earlier log entries and the indicator they had actually seen.

Their first headline, “Two Students Disagree,” no longer seemed useful. They replaced it with “A Number Needs Its History.” The article included both observations. It did not accuse either student of an error the evidence did not support.

After the paper appeared, a younger class asked whether the arrows predicted the exact minute of the next switch. Ada pointed to the notes rather than guessing. The records showed a sequence of events and two switching temperatures. They had not measured how long every warming or cooling period would take.

A ranger sheet for winter hikers describes Trestle Pond, west of Pittsfield. A slab of ice floats on the water. The sheet states that ice floats because it is less dense than liquid water. Density means how much mass is packed into a space. In the same amount of space, this ice has less mass than the liquid water, and the water holds the slab up.

The sheet sets that reason apart from two words hikers often try. Colder names a temperature. Solid names a state. Neither word is the sheet's explanation of the floating. An object the same size would sink if it were denser than the liquid water. This slab stays up because it is less dense. In the ice, the molecules leave more open space than they do in the liquid. That open space is why the density is lower.

The last line is about safety, not about density. Floating does not promise that the ice can hold a person. Trestle Pond is closed to skating this week. Hikers are told to stay on the bank path.

For a Boston neighborhood project, our class interviewed people about places that had changed. My grandmother agreed to talk about a small grocery that had once stood near her apartment. I prepared a page of questions about the closing: why it happened, how people felt, and whether the neighborhood became worse afterward.

Grandmother read the last question twice. Then she asked whether I wanted her answer or the answer that fit my project title, “What We Lost.” I told her the title was only a draft. Still, I had already painted it on the display board.

The interview did not follow my list. She remembered a clerk who kept a stool behind the counter, the smell of oranges in winter, and a delivery truck that blocked the crossing. She missed the clerk, but she did not miss carrying bags around the truck. A newer store had a wider entrance. She could enter it with her shopping cart without lifting the wheels over a step.

When I edited the recording, I kept the oranges and the clerk. The crossing and the wider door seemed to interrupt the story. My partner listened to the shortened version beside the transcript. She asked why Grandmother sounded sad about every change in one version and mixed in the other.

I played both for Grandmother. She chose the longer account. “The old store had good oranges,” she said. “It also had that truck.” I restored the passages I had removed. On the display board, I covered my painted title with a strip of paper reading “Two Stores, One Neighborhood.” The old letters showed faintly through.

At the opening, a visitor asked which store Grandmother preferred. I offered the headphones instead of answering for her. The visitor listened, then asked about the clerk’s stool. That detail had not seemed important when I wrote the questions, but it was the place Grandmother had begun.

On a beach at Cape Ann, an evening class looks up at a crescent Moon. Mr. Duarte says the Moon is a ball in sunlight. About half of it is lit by the Sun all the time. A phase is the portion of that lit half that faces Earth while the Moon travels around Earth. The crescent is a view of the lit half. It is not a shadow Earth is casting on the Moon.

He sets a lamp on a stool and gives Imani a white ball. The side toward the lamp is bright. Imani stays at a marked Earth position while another student carries the ball around her. From some positions she sees mostly the bright side. From others she sees only a slice. The dark side is the side facing away from the lamp. Mr. Duarte has her check that her body is not between the lamp and the ball. The dark side is still there.

Earth's shadow is a different event, he says. When Earth blocks the Sun's light from reaching the Moon, that is a lunar eclipse, not the monthly pattern of phases. A classmate insists that the dark part of every crescent is Earth's shadow. Mr. Duarte points back to the ball. Nothing is standing in the lamp's light, and the dark part remains. Phases are the lit half, seen from changing places. They are not Earth's shadow.

Caleb's report is about his family's cranberry bog near Carver. On Saturday the crew flooded two acres. A reel knocked the berries free, and they floated. People did not pick those berries one by one. Caleb writes that this wet harvest is the method the family uses when the fruit will be sold for juice.

One acre stayed dry. That acre filled an order for fresh berries. Dry harvest is slower, and the fruit is handled so it can be sold fresh. The two methods match two different sales. Flooding the juice acres is the plan, not an accident.

A neighbor tells Caleb that water ruins every berry it touches. The report answers with the family's split. The wet berries are gathered for juice, not discarded. The fresh berries never go into the flood. Two flooded acres and one dry acre are the whole plan for the day.

Mrs. Lane's sugarbush is near Shelburne Falls. She tells visitors that sap runs when the nights fall below freezing and the days rise above freezing. A warm week with no night freeze can stop the run. Full buckets do not appear just because the trees are maples.

This week the buckets yielded 40 gallons of sap. At her sugarhouse, 40 gallons of sap are boiled down to make 1 gallon of syrup. A visitor says, "Then you have 40 gallons of syrup." Mrs. Lane taps the board, where she has written that 40 gallons of sap give 1 gallon of syrup. Forty names the sap. The syrup is the single gallon left after boiling.

Boiling happens in the sugarhouse. The buckets only collect. The crew empties those buckets every day, because sap that sits can spoil. Emptying is a different job from boiling.

The Hayden school paper, in a town west of Worcester, prints two letters under one line. The line says both writers want the June concert to happen, and they disagree about the place.

Lena wants the concert on Hayden Common. Last year 300 people came. The gym holds 180. She says rain is a risk, and the school stores tents that can cover the sound table. Her argument is about space, and the tents are her answer to the weather.

Chris wants the concert in the gym. Last June a storm soaked the sound equipment on the common, and the repair took a week. He says 180 tickets would match the gym, so the count would be planned instead of overflowed. He writes that he is not asking anyone to cancel the concert.

The paper does not choose a winner. It prints the shared aim, then the two places, then the numbers each writer uses.

A family sheet compares two Saturday ways from Quincy Center to a museum near the harbor. The commuter-rail ride is 12 miles and takes about 25 minutes. The ticket is $8. Trains leave at 9:10 a.m. and 10:10 a.m., and the sheet lists no train between them. The bus ride is 14 miles and takes about 55 minutes. The ticket is $2. Buses leave every 20 minutes, starting at 8:40 a.m.

The sheet prints miles, minutes, and prices in separate columns. Miles tell how far the vehicle goes. Minutes tell how long the trip takes. The price is what the rider pays. Cousin Wes says he will take the bus because fewer dollars means he will arrive sooner. The sheet does not say that. A $2 ticket can still take 55 minutes, and an $8 ticket can take 25.

If the family misses the 9:10 a.m. train, the next train is at 10:10 a.m. That wait is 60 minutes. A bus still leaves at 9:20 a.m., because the buses run at 8:40, 9:00, 9:20, and 9:40. The sheet says a missed train does not cancel the bus.

The gale pressed on the Gloucester wharf until the harbor looked like a bowl of broken glass. Ruth watched each wave stand up, flash, and fall into chips of white. She took the words as a picture of the water, not as a claim that the harbor was made of glass.

The wind ironed the flags flat. They stuck straight out from the poles, stiff as cloth under a pressing hand. No one had brought an iron. Grandfather pointed at the skiff and said the lines still needed a check. Ruth wanted the door of the chowder shop, where the windows were already fogged. She said a loose rope could wait until the gale eased.

Grandfather stepped onto the float, found one line slack, and retied it. The skiff stayed at the dock. He did not cast off. When the knot was finished, he nodded toward the shop. Ruth saw that he had not changed his mind about the weather. He had finished the job that brought them out.

They went in with wet sleeves. Ruth ordered chowder and kept two pictures together: the slack line, and the flags standing straight out. The storm was not only a story about being cold.

A class panel at a salt marsh on Plum Island explains the grass. The grass slows the water. Slow water drops its mud, and that mud helps build the marsh. The panel says this is why the grass matters to the land itself, not only to the birds that use it.

Old ditches drain part of the marsh too quickly. The refuge is filling selected ditches so water can spread and the grass can come back. The panel says selected, and a small map names four ditches. It does not say every ditch will be filled.

A visitor writes that every ditch should be filled to stop mosquitoes. The panel is answering a different problem. Mosquito questions go to the desk, where the staff describe their own steps. On this panel, filling ditches is about the grass and the water, not about a promise to end mosquitoes.

High tide covers the lower grass. Low tide leaves the mud bare. The boardwalk stays above both. Walkers are told to remain on the boards because feet can break the soft peat. The peat is the ground the grass is building, and a broken patch is slow to mend.

Jonah's article is about a mill museum in Lowell and a bell. When the mill was running, the bell called workers at 6:00 a.m. On Fridays the museum plays a recording of that bell at 6:00 p.m. The evening bell is for visitors who have come to hear it. It does not start a work shift.

A classmate tells Jonah that a 6:00 p.m. bell means the machines run at night. Jonah checks the gallery. The looms are still. The lights on the walkway stay low. The bell demonstrates a signal, and the signal is not a shift.

The guide holds up a bobbin and says one weaver once watched many looms. The article does not turn that sentence into a threading lesson. It never lists the steps. Jonah's point is the gap between a sound that once started a workday and a recording that now teaches a crowd.

Visitors may take photos from the walkway. They may not touch the looms. Jonah prints those two rules side by side so a reader will not treat the museum as a workshop open for practice.

Canal Rink in Worcester posts a Saturday board. Public skate runs from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. It is open to all ages, and a child under 10 must be with an adult. Stick practice runs from 3:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. and is for ages 12 and up. Public skating is not allowed during stick practice. The building stays open until 6:00 p.m. for the lobby and the skate shop. The ice times are not the building times.

Luis is 11. He and his uncle arrive at 1:20 p.m. Luis may skate then, because public skate is underway. The under-10 rule does not block him, because he is 11. He may not enter stick practice. He is not yet 12, and public skating is not mixed into that block.

If Luis arrives at 2:45 p.m., public skate is over. He can sit in the lobby until the building closes at 6:00 p.m., and he still cannot go on the ice. A friend says the whole rink closes when public skate ends at 2:30. The board keeps the ice, the stick practice, and the building on separate lines.

The story-walk club at Cedar Street School in Lawrence posted pages on the fence by the sidewalk. Each scene has English on the left panel and Spanish on the right panel. The words match. A reader can follow either panel, or move between them, and stay in the same moment of the story.

The club chose that fence because caregivers and students walk past it at dismissal. A teacher had offered the back stairwell. The club said no. Few people pass the stairwell after the bell, and the story was meant for the walk home. The club president told the reporter, "We posted the walk home, not the empty hall."

The article does not explain how to bind a book. It never names glue, thread, or a sewing step. It stays with the audience and with the place the club turned down.

One page was taped too high. A first grader stopped, looked up, and could not read it. The club moved that page down to the height of the other pages. They did not remove the Spanish panel. The change was the height.

Eli found a yellow kayak nosed into the grass beside the Merrimack in Haverhill. No one was in it. He wanted to paddle it home. Then he looked under the rim and saw paint: the name R. Almeida and a phone number. The name made the kayak somebody's, even though the boat was loose.

He used his uncle's phone and called. Mr. Almeida was at the next ramp. He had tied the kayak, and the knot had slipped. He asked Eli to wait with the boat. Eli waited. He did not paddle.

A friend later said finders keepers, because a failed knot is the same as giving a boat away. Eli said the name was still on the hull. A slipped knot explained how the kayak left the ramp. It did not erase the owner. When Mr. Almeida arrived, he thanked Eli and retied the line with two half hitches. Eli walked home without the kayak. The thanks was the whole payment.

For the New Bedford school fair, Leila’s class planned to sell small boxes of donated apples. Each box carried a card naming the orchard and the day the fruit arrived. Leila liked the row of matching cards. They made the jumble of boxes look orderly.

Near closing, a parent returned a box. Two apples had soft spots underneath. The rest looked firm. Leila offered a fresh box, but the parent also wanted someone to check the other donations. Leila wrote “bad orchard” beside the donor’s name before her partner Ellis had even opened another box.

Their teacher asked them to keep the returned fruit separate and record exactly what they could see. They inspected the boxes from that delivery. Three had fruit with similar soft areas; several did not. The damaged boxes had been stacked beside a warm pipe. A volunteer remembered moving them there when the hallway became crowded, but nobody had recorded how long they stayed.

Ellis wanted to blame the warm pipe. Leila wanted to keep the orchard note. The teacher asked what evidence would distinguish an original fruit problem from damage during storage. The class could not reconstruct every step. It could, however, record the condition of each box now, remove unsuitable fruit from sale, and contact the donor with the observations rather than an accusation.

At the next fair meeting, the returned box sat empty on the table. Leila had changed her note to “soft areas found in some boxes; storage history incomplete.” Ellis proposed a storage chart showing where each delivery was placed and when. The class added a check before boxes reached the sale table.

Leila kept the matching orchard cards, but gave each a blank space on the back. The front still told where the fruit began. The back could now tell what happened after it arrived. She placed the parent’s returned card first in the new folder, without the words she had written in haste.

A family walking group in Northampton planned a new route for its monthly outings. The old route followed an exposed dike beside the river. A proposed route used a lane through trees and a short hill. On the map, the lane looked shorter. Ava colored it red and titled her proposal “The Easy Way.”

NOTICE FROM THE GROUP LEADER Our group includes walkers with different paces. Before changing the regular route, please compare distance, surface, places to rest, and the steepest sections. A shorter route may suit some people, but distance is not our only concern. We will inspect the lane on Saturday and invite comments before deciding.

AVA’S NOTES FROM SATURDAY The wooded section sheltered us from wind. I could hear the person beside me without raising my voice. The hill was steeper than I expected from the map, and its loose stones made two people slow down. There was no bench at the top. The dike has two benches, but little shelter. We stopped to compare both routes on the same sheet.

LETTER FROM WALKER THEO I prefer the dike for the regular outing. I do not enjoy its wind, but I can pause on the benches and still see the group ahead. In the lane, the bend beyond the hill hid the people in front. That might not matter to a group that stays close together. It matters to me when I stop. I would still like the lane offered as a separate outing for people who want it.

AVA’S REVISED PROPOSAL My first title does not describe everyone’s experience. I would like to keep the lane on our list, but not call it easy without saying for whom. Could we mark the surfaces and rest points on both maps? A choice sheet would let a family ask which conditions fit its walk instead of guessing from the length of a red line.

At the meeting, the group kept its regular dike outing and scheduled one optional lane walk. Ava brought extra pencils. Beside her old title she added a question mark, then began marking the first bench on the other map.