Georgia Milestones Assessment System English Language Arts Grade 7

The yellow gauge beside the Ocmulgee in Macon wore a brown collar where the water stood for three days and then dropped. Imani and I walked the levee path, counting bottle caps the river had set in a line.

High water is a guest that rearranges the path and leaves without naming what it moved. The ordinary path is the host that stays, scuffed, familiar, and open by afternoon.

A folding chair sat in the crook of a low limb, as if the river had tried to furnish the tree and quit. I wanted the brown collar to mean the river was sorry. Imani said a mark is a record, not an apology.

Below us the current looked polite. It slid past the post and did not touch the collar. Polite is not the same as finished. The collar will fade, and another hard rain can raise the river again.

Hadiya Brooks wrote to the Dublin parks board about the seed library in the community room at the city park. Her claim is to keep that room open on the first Wednesday of each month, the day families already come for seeds. She is not asking for a new building, a second day, or a shop that sells plants.

A clerk told the board the room is unused. Hadiya logged the packets taken on four first Wednesdays: 22, 19, 25, and 17. Most were beans or okra. She writes that unused does not fit a table that gave out those packets.

She names the cost of staying open. The room needs a volunteer for one hour and the light kept on. She calls that cost real. A real cost, she writes, is not the same fact as an empty room. The packets are the evidence that people came. The volunteer hour is the price of keeping the day.

The letter moves from the claim, to the log that answers the clerk, and then to the cost. The last line repeats one request: keep the first Wednesday. It does not add a day the letter never names.

Malik Ferris sat down in the newsroom at Cedar Hall Middle School in Athens with one goal. He wanted to post the headline Cafeteria Waste Cut in Half before Friday, because the layout contest closed that afternoon. The number came from his friend Noelle's tray count on a single Tuesday.

Ms. Rourke, who runs the kitchen, set last month's sheet beside the draft. That Tuesday had been a field-trip day. Fewer lunches were served, so the tray pile was small before anyone talked about waste. Noelle had compared that short pile with a full week. The word half described those two piles. It did not describe a change in how much food students threw away on an ordinary day.

Malik said a duller headline would lose the contest. Ms. Rourke said a contest is a reason to be read, not a reason to let that Tuesday stand for every day. She did not tell him to drop the story. She said the sheet had to be in the caption if the word half stayed in the title.

By the end of the period, Malik said his goal had changed. He no longer wanted the headline posted as written before Friday. He wanted it held until he recounted a regular Tuesday and printed both numbers, the field-trip pile and the ordinary pile, in the same caption.

He left the contest form in the drawer. The story was still his. The sentence that had made the story look finished was the sentence he was no longer willing to print alone.

A 4-H note from Red Hill Shed, a family peach stand outside Fort Valley, compares two baskets sold on the same Saturday. Basket A looked the fullest. Large fruit sat on top, and the basket was piled above the rim. It weighed 7 pounds and cost 8 dollars. Basket B looked smaller. It was packed level with the rim, weighed 10 pounds, and cost 10 dollars.

The note separates two ideas. A full look is what a buyer sees from above. A full buy, in this note, means more pounds of ripe fruit for each dollar. Those two ideas can point at different baskets.

The writer divides cost by pounds and states the results. Basket A costs about one dollar and fourteen cents a pound. Basket B costs one dollar a pound. The fuller look belongs to A. The lower price per pound belongs to B.

A buyer who wants the basket that looks most generous can choose A and still be right about the look. A buyer who wants more fruit for the money is answering a different question, and on that question B is ahead. The note does not call either buyer foolish. It says the word full has to be tied to the fact being counted.

A recap in the Newnan student paper described Thursday's game at Pecan Ridge Middle School. In the second half the home team stopped pushing, the gym grew quiet, and the writer said the half had gone flat. The recap never says the wooden court bent or lost its level. The missing push and the quiet gym are what flat describes.

With four minutes left, Mira Okonkwo threw a pass that reached the wing in stride, with no extra bounce and no wait. The writer called it a sharp pass. The ball is not described as having a blade or a cutting edge. The next sentence says the shot from that pass tied the score.

Then the home team surged. Players sprinted back on defense, and the bench stood up. No whistle blew. The writer said the team had found its charge again. In that sentence, charge sits beside the sprint and the standing bench, so it names a rush of effort. It does not name a fee at the door, and it does not name a foul.

The recap turns once. It opens on the quiet half, moves to the pass that changed the look, and closes on the effort that returned. The last lines set the quiet half beside the exact pass.

At Hearth and Rind, a bakery in Thomasville, Lila Grant keeps a card above the cooling rack. The card lists three steps in time order: bake, then cool, then ice. Lila tells new helpers that the order is the point of the card.

Dana wanted to ice a layer cake the minute it left the oven. A lunch order was due in twenty minutes, and icing at once looked like a way to save that time. Lila stopped her. Icing on a hot cake melts and slides, and the cake has to be baked again. Lila said that saving twenty minutes at the rack spends the cake. The next sentence explains the phrase: they would use up a cake that could have been finished and would have to start over.

The card is a sequence, not a list of equally optional steps. Cool is the middle step Dana wanted to skip. That step is part of the work, not a pause before the work. The oven is the right tool for batter. It is the wrong place to set a cake that is ready for icing.

Lila's last line tells Dana how to read a step that has a before and an after. The helper does not get to pick a favorite step and call the others optional.

Yara Bennett tended a raised bed beside the cafeteria at Thread Mill Middle School in LaGrange. Neighbors picked okra and peppers after school. The first time the bed was stripped by noon, Yara nailed up a board that read Not yours. The plants still needed water. The board did not water them.

She took the board down the next week and set a pencil jar on the corner post. Anyone who picked was asked to write the vegetable and the number of pieces. The jar did not lock the bed. It kept a record so Yara knew what to plant again.

A boy asked why she would feed people who had not paid for the seed. Yara said a bed kept only to be admired stops being a garden. The work, she said, is to water and replant after the harvest leaves. She called the bed a table, not a trophy.

In her words, a trophy is for looking. A table is for feeding, and then for setting again. Guarding the bed as a display fights the purpose that made her plant it. The pencil lines show what left, and the watering can is how the bed continues.

A science note from Etowah Bend Middle School in Canton describes two waters behind the gym. Spring Creek runs all year. At the ford it is usually knee-deep and clear enough to see the stones. Students can learn that usual depth because the creek changes slowly.

The storm ditch is different. It is dry on most school days. When rain hits the parking lot, the ditch can fill in an hour. Yesterday's empty concrete is not a promise about today. The note says steady and sudden are different dangers.

A student proposed one sign for both places, reading Water is shallow. The teacher said that sentence fits the creek's ford on a normal day. At the ditch after rain, the same sentence would be false and unsafe. One label cannot carry two behaviors.

The comparison stays in this schoolyard. The note does not claim every creek in Georgia is knee-deep, and it does not claim every ditch fills in an hour. It claims these two, side by side, have to be read separately.

The archive at Westford Middle School in Milledgeville keeps two accounts of the school's Lantern Walk, an evening the neighborhood started for itself. A plaque by the gym says the first walk was in 1998 and included forty families and a band. A diary kept by the custodian, Otto Marsh, says the first walk was in 1996, in the rain, with twelve families, and that 1998 was the year a band was added.

The archive note tells how the pages were made. The diary was written the week of the 1996 walk. The plaque was ordered in 2010 by a committee that used a newspaper photo of the band. The photo has a 1998 date on the back.

The note sorts the conflict. On the year of the first walk, the diary and the plaque disagree. The diary is the closer record because it was written the week of the event it describes. On the band, the diary's line about 1998 and the dated photo agree. The plaque is right that a band joined a later walk. It is wrong if it calls 1998 the first year.

The note is built as the two accounts, then the conflict, then a rule for sorting. The rule is about which page was nearer to the walk, not about which page is easier to read from the sidewalk.

At a student-council meeting at Robins Bend Middle School in Warner Robins, 16 members raised hands for a longer lunch and 11 raised hands for a later bus. Twenty-seven members were in the room. The secretary, Nell Ortiz, wrote that the longer lunch won the vote of the members present.

A petition gathered at lunch the month before carried 40 signatures for the later bus. Some names belong to students who are not on the council. The petition was not the vote taken in the room. Nell refuses to add those names to the 11.

The minutes compare two piles. The hands are a decision by the people who voted that day. The petition is support collected at a different time, from a wider group, for the idea that lost the council vote. Neither pile is everyone in the school.

Nell adds a limit in the last paragraph. Sixteen is more than 11, so the longer lunch has a majority of the members who voted. A majority of those present is not the same phrase as the whole school, and a petition of 40 is not a recount of the meeting. The later bus still had 11 votes. Winning does not erase the smaller number. It decides the plan.

At a boat ramp outside Folkston, near the edge of the Okefenokee, Caleb Dunn read a ranger card nailed to a post. The card said to stay out of the draw when the wind is up. Caleb pictured a sketch. He thought the word draw meant a picture, and he looked around for a drawing he was supposed to avoid.

His uncle tapped the next sentence. It said boats slide sideways there because the low channel pulls water toward the swamp. On this card, a draw is that low channel. It is not a picture, and it is not a contest in which somebody wins a prize.

The clue sits in the sentence after the hard word. Pulling water and boats sliding sideways fit a channel. They do not fit a pencil sketch. Caleb stopped hunting for a drawing, moved the boat off the low side, and left the ramp along the higher edge.

The card uses one meaning and shuts the others by what the next sentence describes. A familiar word can name a piece of ground.

At a Saturday rowing class on the Chattahoochee in Columbus, Sonia Patel started with a clear goal. She wanted to beat her older brother Dev's posted time on the 500-meter piece that same morning. She copied the fast start written beside his time.

Coach Herrera stopped her at the 250-meter mark. Sonia's split had fallen apart. She had spent the start, and the second half of the piece had no push left. The coach did not erase Dev's time. She said a fast start that empties the middle is not the same skill as the turn Dev uses to come back to the dock.

At the end of practice Sonia stated a different goal. She no longer wanted to beat the posted time that day. She wanted to hold an even split and learn the turn Dev uses. The posted time could wait for a later morning.

The change is a change of target, not a decision to quit the boat. Sonia still intends to row the 500 meters. She has stopped treating her brother's number as the job of this practice.

Farah Nguyen, a seventh grader at Loom Hill Middle School in Dalton, wrote to the city public-works board. Her claim is to build a shade roof over the bus stop that already stands on the sidewalk in front of the school. She is not asking the city to move the stop or to cut the oak across the street.

A board member had said the oak already shades that stop. Farah measured the stop at 3:10 p.m. on four September afternoons. The school wall's shadow ended six feet short of the bench. A thermometer on the sunny bench read 98, 101, 97, and 99 degrees. A second thermometer on the shaded sidewalk behind the stop read about 86 degrees each day.

She attached the sheet. Those readings answer the oak claim. After 2 p.m. the tree shades the street, not the bench. The degrees on the bench are the evidence. They are not a story added after the letter was planned.

She names the cost. A roof needs posts and a permit, and she calls that a real bill. She still wants the roof. The letter's order is the claim, then the measurements that answer the board member, then the cost she does not hide.

The shade she is counting is the shade on the bench where students wait. Shade on the street, six feet away, does not cool that bench.

The garden club at Pine Straw Middle School in Statesboro compared two bird boxes. The east box faces the morning sun. Last spring it had fewer chicks. The west box faces afternoon shade and had more chicks. The club's first idea was that shade caused the difference.

A second difference was on the boxes themselves. A vine had grown across the east box, and the entrance was partly blocked. The west entrance was clear. The note says the direction a box faces and a blocked hole are not one fact. A reader who reports only shade has dropped the vine.

The club will cut the vine and watch another spring before deciding that direction caused the result. Until then, the note treats shade as a possible cause, not a proven one. More chicks in the west box is a result. It is not, by itself, proof that afternoon shade was the reason.

Two ideas sit side by side in one yard: the facing direction of the boxes, and the blocked entrance on the east box. Both were true. Only the direction was the club's first explanation.

Wesley Grant played trumpet in the band room at Maple Street Middle School in Carrollton. When the director moved him from first chair to third, Wesley wanted to skip sectionals. He said a third-chair part was a demotion, and a demotion did not deserve his afternoon.

Kit Alvarez, the section leader, pointed at measure 40. Third chair still had the entrance there, with the same rest counted in front of it. The label on the chair did not play the note. If Wesley was absent, the entrance would be a hole, not a quieter version of first chair.

Wesley came the next week, missed the entrance once, and marked the rest with a pencil. The week after that, he entered with the section. Kit said the chair had not changed. The attendance had.

A label can name a part, Kit told him, but the label does not play measure 40. The entrance happens only when the person in the chair plays it. Skipping to protect pride would have left a hole. Showing up did not move him back to first chair. It put the written note into the room.

The garden behind Ridgefield Middle School in Tifton had a noon problem. Tomato leaves wilted by lunch even though students watered every morning. The first paragraph of the club note states that problem and stops there.

The next paragraphs find the cause. Water ran off the packed path and never reached the roots. A student suggested pouring more water on the same path. The note explains why that would fail. More water would still run off. The amount was not what was wrong with the plan. The path was.

The solution is a slow drip hose laid along the stems. The club checked the leaves for two weeks. They stayed up through noon. The last paragraph says the fix matches the cause. Pouring more water was the wrong size of answer because the path, not the amount, was the problem.

The note is organized as a problem, a cause, a failed idea, a solution, and a closing that ties the fix back to the cause. A reader who stops at the suggestion to use more water has stopped before the note's answer.

On a creek walk in Rome, Sofia Brennan read a trail card that said to keep to the high bank. She thought of the building downtown where her uncle keeps a savings account. In that first picture, a bank was a place that stores money.

The next line on the card said the low side is mud and the high bank is the dry ground above the creek. In this instruction, bank means the raised edge of the creek. The word high tells her which edge. A building that stores money has no low side of mud, and it does not sit above this creek.

Sofia laughed, left the wallet question in the parking lot, and walked the dry ground. She told her uncle that the card and the building share a sound and not a direction. Comparing the two meanings kept her out of the mud. Using only the meaning she knew first would have sent her looking for a lobby on the trail.

The passage stays with one card. It does not say the downtown building is closed. It says that building is the wrong meaning for this sentence.