Georgia Milestones Assessment System English Language Arts Grade 5

On the first Saturday of October, the town of Moss Bend, Georgia, held its pecan parade on River Street. A float shaped like a pecan pie stopped at the railroad crossing. Two people who were there wrote firsthand accounts that afternoon, and the town paper printed both.

Account from Inez Holt, owner of Holt's Bakery: "I watched from the sidewalk in front of my shop. A wheel of the pie float sank into a soft spot in the gravel, and the float stopped. The band behind it kept playing. Parents beside me lifted the back corner, and in about ten minutes the float moved again. Children had extra time to catch candy. Nobody near my door sounded angry. I went back to icing cupcakes before the last truck passed."

Account from Caleb Ruiz, a fifth grader with the River Street School banner: "I was in the street, two groups behind the pie float. We halted on the near side of the tracks, and a crossing bell began to ring. Mr. Dunn told us to back up in a straight line until we were off the rails. I did not see parents lifting the float. I saw a parade helper slide a wooden board under the stuck wheel. The band ahead of us stopped playing so we could hear Mr. Dunn. It felt tense until the float rolled on and the bell went quiet. I remember the bell more than the candy."

The last whistle sends us off the field,

and red clay sticks in the lines of our soles.

This is not mud carried from a far river.

This is Georgia ground, soft after a warm rain.

By the gate the color climbs our socks

in crooked bands the shade of brick.

Tomas scrapes his heel along the curb.

I leave mine, so the field can ride home with me.

At the spigot, cold water loosens the red

and spins a thin circle toward the drain.

What washes away is only the extra clay.

The field will be waiting tomorrow,

in the same patient color.

On Friday, Mr. Patel's class walked the wooden path at Pelican Path in Bramble Landing, on the Georgia coast. A sign at the first step said, "Stay on the boards. The dune grass is working." Beyond the sign, tall sea oats bent in the wind, and their seed heads tapped together.

Ranger Nia Cole held up a fallen stem and showed the class a sketch of the roots. The roots were not short like lawn grass. They ran down and sideways through the sand, tying the dune together. "I call them ropes," she said. "You do not see the ropes, but they are why this hill is still here."

She pointed to two places on the same dune. Where the oats grew thick, the slope after last month's storm was smooth. Where people had cut a sandy shortcut, the storm had scooped a bare gully. Footprints still crossed that bare spot. "Each step can snap a young plant," Cole said. "A gap in the grass gives the wind a place to take the sand."

A student asked why the town did not just truck in new sand after every storm. Cole said new sand can wash away again if nothing is holding it. The oats trap windblown grains and add them to the dune. The wooden path lets people reach the beach without breaking those plants.

On the way back, Mr. Patel had the class write one job of the sea oats. Most papers said the same thing in different words: the grass holds the dune, and the path holds the people off the grass.

Luz spent Saturday morning at her Aunt Delia's peach shed outside Fort Valley, Georgia. The shed smelled sweet, but the peaches in the shipping crates did not. They were firm and pale gold. Luz pressed one and frowned. "These are not ready," she said. "The ones on the low tree already smell like summer."

Aunt Delia set a soft peach on the table. Its skin had split, and a brown bruise spread under the split. "That one stayed on the tree until it was sweet," she said. "Then it rode eight miles in a bin. Soft and sweet can be right for a kitchen today. They are a poor pair for a road."

She handed Luz a firm peach. "This one is mature, but still firm," she said. "It can take a bump in the truck. The sugar was made on the tree. In a few days, off the tree, it will soften and smell the way you want." Luz sniffed it and smelled almost nothing.

A buyer named Mr. Cho pointed at the split peach. "I can sell that one at my stand this afternoon," he said. "I cannot pack a crate of them for Atlanta." Aunt Delia nodded and kept the split peach in a small basket marked Today.

Luz made two labels. The basket label said "Soft, for today." The crate label said "Firm, for the road." She stopped judging the crate by the smell at the shed. The softness and the smell were coming. The sugar was already there.

At Longleaf Learning Center, south of Waycross, Georgia, a gopher tortoise had dug its burrow in pale sand under the pines. The opening was a low half-circle, wider than a lunch tray. Guide Imani Brooks asked the class to keep their hands out of it.

"The tortoise digs a tunnel that can stretch as long as a school bus," she said. "Down there the air stays cooler and damper than the air out here." A thermometer hung in the shade of a pine read 94 degrees. Brooks laid a second thermometer at the burrow mouth, waited, and pulled it back. It read 81 degrees.

Brooks pointed to tracks in the apron of sand. "This burrow belongs to the tortoise, but other animals use the doorway. This morning I saw a frog at the lip. A mouse has been in and out. When the burrow is healthy, it is a neighborhood, not a single room."

The tortoise was nearby, clipping grass. It did not charge the class. Brooks said a truck driven across the burrow could collapse the roof. Then the tortoise and the animals that share the tunnel would lose that shelter at the same time.

Before the bus left, the class stayed on the marked path. They listed what the one door was doing: cooling a tunnel, sheltering neighbors, and leaving the tortoise free to eat in the sun.

Lila and her father walked the boardwalk at Sawgrass Creek, outside Salt Hill, Georgia, twice on the same Saturday. The first walk was at 7 a.m., at low tide. The second was at 2 p.m., when the tide was high. The creek bed, the dock, and the oak tree did not move. The water did.

In the morning, mud stretched from the boardwalk to the far grass. Fiddler crabs waved their claws over the wet flat. A heron stood in a thin sheet of water and stabbed once. The family's small boat sat on the mud with its rope slack. Lila wrote, "The creek has pulled its blanket down."

In the afternoon the mud was gone under gray-green water. The crabs were hidden. The heron was gone, and a tern dove near the channel marker. The boat that had rested on the mud now floated, and the rope ran tight from the bow to the cleat. Lila's father said, "Same cleat, higher water."

Lila looked at her two lists. The oak, the dock, and the cleat appeared on both. The crabs, the heron, the bare mud, and the grounded boat appeared only on the morning list. The tern, the covered mud, and the floating boat appeared only on the afternoon list.

She crossed out a sentence that said the creek had changed into a different place. She wrote a new one: "The place stayed. The tide changed what I could see and what the boat could do."

The library in Pine Hollow, Georgia, let Mr. Green's class sort a donated box labeled "Town Pictures, Unfiled." The rule on the table was short: read the caption on the back before you say what a picture shows.

Deon held up a black-and-white photo of people smiling in a wet street. They carried boxes and waved at the camera. "Parade," he said. "Everybody looks happy, so it must be the pecan festival." He reached for a festival label.

Mr. Green turned the photo over. The pencil caption said, "March 12, 1998. Neighbors carry books out of the library after Mill Branch flooded River Street. We smiled because the children's room was safe upstairs." There was no mention of a festival.

Deon set the festival label down. The smiles were real, but they did not tell him the event. The wet street, the boxes of books, and the date did not add up to a parade. He copied the caption onto a clean card and clipped the card to the photo.

A second photo showed the same street, dry, with a banner that did say "Pecan Festival." Its caption gave a date in October 1997. Deon put that one in a different envelope. "Same street," he said, "two events. The caption keeps me from mixing them."

The garden at Brickfield Elementary in Macon, Georgia, has two bean beds side by side. Bed A is packed red clay from the schoolyard. Bed B is that same clay mixed with compost and sand, piled in a raised frame. The class planted the same beans in both beds on the same morning.

Ms. Ortega told the class that clay is made of tiny particles that fit tightly. Water has a hard time moving through those tight spaces. Compost and sand make gaps. "Drain means the water can move down, not sit on top," she said.

On Thursday a hard storm dropped two inches of rain before lunch. At one o'clock, Bed A still held a shiny puddle, and the bean leaves there looked yellow and limp. Bed B had dark, crumbly soil with no puddle. Its leaves were green and upright. A ruler stuck in Bed A showed water above the soil line. The ruler in Bed B came out muddy but not dripping.

Some students thought Bed A had received more rain. The rain gauge on the fence between the beds read two inches, one gauge for both beds. Ms. Ortega said the clouds had given both beds the same rain. The soil had not treated that rain the same way.

The class added a line under the garden map: "Same rain, different beds. Clay held the water. The mix let it drain." They did not pull up the beans. They planned to loosen Bed A and mix in compost before the next planting.

At Pine Knot Elementary in Albany, Georgia, the principal moved fifth-grade recess from 1:15 p.m. to 9:10 a.m. for the first hot weeks of school. A note went home. It listed three parts: play before the hottest hour, drink water at the porch fountain, and rest in the shade if a teacher taps your shoulder.

Andre was annoyed. He liked the long lunch recess, and he told his friend Mae that the new time was a punishment for talking in line. "They took the good part of the day," he said. He skipped the fountain and stood in a sunny patch of the blacktop to prove he did not need the plan.

By 9:20 his face was already hot, and the blacktop smelled like warm tar. Nurse Keller was on the porch with a clipboard, not a stack of behavior slips. "This is not a consequence," she said. "Bodies heat up faster on this yard in the afternoon. The note is a safety plan. Water and shade are tools, the same as a helmet at batting practice."

Mae had filled her bottle and was drawing a four-square court in a stripe of shade. Andre drank, then joined her. The game was the same one they used to play after lunch. Only the clock and the sun had been moved in the plan.

That night Andre rewrote his complaint. "I thought the time change was a punishment," he wrote. "It was a way to keep recess and lower the risk." He still missed the afternoon, but he stopped calling the note a penalty.

Students from Oak Lane School stood with wildlife biologist Dr. June Hale on a closed sand road at the Wiregrass Tract in south Georgia. A low fire moved slowly through the pine woods. The flames stayed below the adults' knees. Hale said this was a prescribed burn, a fire planned for the health of the woods, not a wildfire racing out of control.

Before the burn, the crew checked the wind. Hale told the class the plan called for a light wind blowing away from the road and away from the young longleaf pines they wanted to protect. If the wind had been strong or aimed the wrong way, the burn would have waited. "Prescribed means chosen on purpose, the way a doctor chooses a medicine for a reason," she said.

The fire nibbled dry grass and thick shrubs. It did not climb the green crowns of the older pines. Hale said sunlight would reach the forest floor again, and tender plants that gopher tortoises eat could grow. Thick shrubs had been shading those plants out.

A student asked how this was different from the wildfire he had seen on the news. Hale answered with two contrasts. A wildfire can start by accident, run before a strong wind, and burn hotter than the plan. This fire was lit on a chosen day, kept low, and watched by a crew with water tanks on the road.

When the class left, the trunks were darkened and the shrubs were thin. The pines were still standing. Hale said the black on the bark was not the same as a dead tree. The class wrote one line: "A low, planned fire can clear a crowded floor without taking the woods."

The River Step Museum in Macon opened a room about Georgia's fall line. A model river ran across a table. Above the step, the land was labeled Piedmont. Below it, the land was labeled Coastal Plain. At the step, the model water turned white and noisy.

Guide Omar Reed set a toy boat at the bottom and pushed it upstream. It bumped the rocks and spun. "Boats from the coast could reach this far," he said. "They could not climb the rapids. People unloaded barrels here. A town can grow where every boat has to stop."

He moved a small wheel into the falling water. The wheel turned. "The same drop that stopped the boat could turn a mill," he said. "Cloth, grain, and lumber used that power. The trouble for travel was a help for work."

A wall map marked Augusta, Macon, and Columbus with red dots along the fall line. Reed said each city sits where a river crosses that line. Augusta is on the Savannah River, Macon on the Ocmulgee, and Columbus on the Chattahoochee. The dots were not placed in a straight row by chance.

A student asked if the rapids were still the only reason to visit those cities. Reed shook his head. "The exhibit explains how the cities got their start," he said. "It does not say the rocks are the whole story now." The class wrote: "The fall line stopped boats and turned mills, and cities grew at that stop."

Just before dawn in Darien, Georgia, Eli carried his uncle's lunch down the dock to the shrimp boat Maree. He wanted the ropes cast off at once. Uncle Ray held up a laminated card instead. "Checklist first," he said. "Tide and engine before the creek."

Eli sighed. The card looked like a delay. Ray touched each line with a pencil: fuel cap tight, bilge clear, horn working, hose clamp seated. At the hose line he stopped. The clamp was loose, and a drop of fuel beaded at the fitting.

Ray shut the valve, tightened the clamp, and wiped the drop. "If we had cast off, that leak would have been a problem in the channel, not a fix on the dock," he said. Eli looked at the card again. The lines were not chores piled on for show. One line had found a real fault.

They waited twenty minutes for the tide Ray wanted. Eli used the time to coil a rope the way Ray showed him, with the end on top so it would run free. When the boat finally left the dock, the hose stayed dry and the horn answered Ray's test blast.

On the way out, Eli said, "I thought the card was keeping us from the work." Ray shook his head. "The card is part of the work." Eli wrote that sentence on the back of the card, then gave the pencil back.

I am the fifth-grade reader for the Friday weather on the morning news at Pecan Street Elementary in Statesboro, Georgia. Ms. Flores handed me a script with two columns. The left column was headed Heard. The right column was headed Added. "Heard is what the gauge, the sky, or a person actually gave us," she said. "Added is extra excitement we stuck on. Do not let Added sneak into Heard."

Our fence gauge showed one inch of rain since Thursday. The sky at 7:30 was clearing, with a bright strip over the pecan trees. I wanted the first line to say, "A terrible flood hit overnight." Ms. Flores tapped the gauge. One inch is a soaking rain. It is not, by itself, a flood report. I moved "terrible flood" to Added and wrote "one inch since Thursday" under Heard.

The custodian, Mr. Pike, had told me the side lot puddled by the gym door. I could put his words under Heard because he said them: "The gym door had a puddle." I could not write, "The gym flooded and practice is canceled." He had not said that. Practice was still on the board for 3:15.

Owen, who runs the camera, wanted to add, "This is the wettest Friday ever." The class record sheet on the wall showed a Friday last November with two inches. Owen had not checked it. "Wettest ever" went to Added, with a star that meant "not supported." The Heard line stayed, "one inch since Thursday, puddle at the gym door, sky clearing at 7:30."

On the recording I spoke only the Heard lines. The Added column stayed on the page so we could see what we had wanted to say and why we left it out. A punchy line is not a measurement. I liked the script better when the exciting words had a column of their own.

Cousins Willa and Harris wrote letters on the same Sunday in March. Willa lives in Apple Ridge, in the north Georgia mountains. Harris lives in Bramble Landing, on the Georgia coast. They described one week of weather. Their letters crossed in the mail.

Willa wrote: "Rain came all Wednesday and turned our red-clay road to slick paste. Thursday morning the clouds tore open, and I could see snow on the far ridge, thin as a chalk line. We did not get snow in the yard. We got mud. I walked to the bus with my shoes in a plastic bag and put them on at the school door. Dad said the apple trees are not blooming yet. The week felt heavy and brown."

Harris wrote: "Wednesday's rain was warm and short. By Thursday the marsh was bright, and I walked the Pelican Path boards in a T-shirt. The sea oats were tossing, but the dune held. No mud stuck to me. I did get salt on my glasses from the wind. Mom said the shrimp boats went out Friday once the hard wind had passed. The week felt light and blue."

Willa read Harris's letter twice. They had both had Wednesday rain. After that, their weeks did not match. She underlined "snow on the far ridge" and "salt on my glasses." Then she wrote a note in the margin: "Same state, same Wednesday, different Thursday."

Ms. Ward's class in Savannah, Georgia, wrote a ten-minute play called "The Last Slip" after they rode a river ferry and talked with the deckhand. The play had to fit on one page. The argument started when Theo wanted a lightning scene.

"The sky was clear the whole ride," said Amira, who had kept the notes. "We saw the deckhand coil a rope, we heard the horn once, and we counted twelve cars. We did not see lightning. If we add a storm, the audience will think it happened."

Theo said a storm would make the ending exciting. Ms. Ward did not cut the scene. She opened the program note, which had two headings: Observed and Imagined. "The play can include a storm," she said. "The note has to tell the truth about where the storm came from. Observed is what we witnessed. Imagined is what we added."

The class put three items under Observed: one horn blast, a deckhand coiling a rope, and twelve cars. They put two items under Imagined: a lightning scene and a line in which the deckhand says, "This is my last trip." The deckhand had not said that. Amira had asked, and he had said he would be at work again on Monday.

Theo still liked the thunder. He also liked that the program did not pretend the thunder was a fact. At the performance, he pointed to the two headings before the play began. The excitement stayed on the stage. The record stayed in the note.

On the Cedar Rim Trail in the north Georgia mountains, the path does not climb in a straight line. It zigzags. Mr. Alden called each sharp turn a switchback. The class was tired, and Rosa asked why they could not use the straight gully that cut up the slope beside them.

Mr. Alden stopped at a post where the gully met the trail. The gully was a bare slot in the leaves, with roots dangling and pebbles piled at the bottom. "Last spring that slot was a footpath someone made as a shortcut," he said. "Rain found it and used it as a chute. The water took the soil. The shortcut became a ditch."

He pointed back at the switchback. The trail bed was covered with leaves, and low logs braced the outer edge. "A zigzag makes each step less steep," he said. "Water slows down and sinks in, instead of racing to the bottom. The longer walk is the one that keeps the hill."

Rosa looked at her muddy shoes and at the dangling roots. The straight way was shorter and already damaged. She stayed on the switchback. At the overlook she wrote two labels in her notebook: "Shortcut: fast, then gone. Switchback: longer, still a path."

A sign at the top repeated the rule in plain words. Stay on the built trail. Do not cut between switchbacks. The view did not depend on a straight climb. The hill did.

I am in fifth grade, and I set jars of sourwood honey on our table at Brick Arch Market in Augusta, Georgia, while the sky was still gray. Mom said the first hour is for people who work early. I thought that meant grumpy people. The lids were sticky, my jacket was thin, and I wanted to be back in bed.

The first customer did not smile. She pointed at the small jars, paid with exact bills, and left with the honey inside her lunch bag. I whispered, "She didn't even taste it." Mom said, "She tasted it last week. This week she is on her way to the hospital. Exact bills are what you use when you cannot stand in a line."

A man in paint-speckled pants bought a large jar and a biscuit from the next table. He held the biscuit in his teeth while he zipped his jacket. "Clock starts at seven," he said, more to the zipper than to us. I had been reading hurry as rudeness.

Around eight the crowd changed. People lingered, asked about the bees, and sampled from the tiny spoons. They had time. The early buyers had not been a different kind of customer. They had been the same kind, with less time.

I wrote a line on the price card, under the cost of a small jar: "Early buyers may be heading to work." It was not an excuse for a frown. It was a reminder that a short visit can still be a polite one. I stopped waiting for every customer to act like the eight o'clock crowd.