Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress English Language Arts Grade 6

For a local-history table, the library in Leland asks sixth graders to label a wooden model of a harbor skiff. The model's card says the hull on the table is 5 inches long. Each inch stands for 2 feet, so the real boat is 10 feet. The card shows the arithmetic: 5 × 2 = 10.

Priya writes "10 feet" on a tent card and adds the words "length of the real boat." Malik points at the 5 and the 2 and adds them. He writes 5 + 2 = 7 and says the real boat was 7 feet long, because both numbers appear on the card. The librarian kneels by the table. A scale is a rate, she says. Each inch stands for 2 feet, and you use a rate by multiplying. Adding inches to feet mixes two units and does not give the boat's length.

The model sits without oars. A second card says the real skiff carried one fisher and a crate of smoked fish from the Leland dock out to a larger boat. The model is there to show the hull's shape. It leaves out objects the real skiff carried.

Before the library opens the display, Priya slides a sentence under the product: the model is for seeing the hull, not a full list of the cargo. Malik erases 7 and writes 10.

The seed room at Westbridge Middle School in Holland has one heater and a card screwed to the door. The card is the whole rule. The heater turns on at 60 degrees and off at 64. If the room drops to 60, the heater starts. It stays on through the warming that follows. It turns off when the room reaches 64, and not before.

On a March morning the thermometer stands at 62. The log for that hour says the heater is still on. Sixty-two is higher than the start and lower than the stop. The heater has already begun and has not yet been told to quit. At 62 it is still on. A note in the margin, written by a new helper, guessed that the heater waits until 64 and treats 60 as a warning. The head gardener crossed that note out. Sixty is the start, not a warning. Sixty-four is the stop.

Nothing on the card adds a third temperature. There is no mark that shuts the heater off at 62, and there is no mark that delays the start until 64. A reading of 62 sits on the climb from on to off. The pepper seedlings need that steady climb. If the heater quit at the first degree above 60, the room would slip back down before the trays were warm.

The field log from Lakeshore Middle School in Roscommon describes a January stop at Higgins Lake. Students lower a jar into open water beside the dock and set an ice chunk from the lake's edge into that jar. The chunk floats. The log states the reason in one sentence: ice floats because it is less dense than liquid water.

The next lines define the word that sentence depends on. Density means how much mass is packed into a space. The log says that in the same amount of space, this ice has less mass than the liquid water, so the water holds the chunk up. A sketch shows the ice sitting high, with only a little of it below the surface line.

Two labels on the sketch are crossed out. One label said the ice floats because it is colder. The other said the ice floats because it is a solid. The teacher wrote that colder names a temperature and solid names a state. Neither label explains the floating. A chunk of the same size would sink if it were denser than the liquid water. This ice stays up because it is less dense. The molecules in the ice leave more open space than they do in the liquid, and that open space is why the density is lower.

A red box at the bottom is about safety, not about density. The floating chunk does not mean the lake ice can hold a person. The class remains on the cleared beach. The dock is for the jar, not for a walk onto Higgins Lake.

Dear Cousin Ade,

You wrote that January ought to be our warm season because Earth is closest to the Sun in January. That closeness is real. It does not make the seasons. In our science class in Marquette, Ms. Patel said the seasons come from Earth's tilt. A Michigan January is still winter. Closest and winter happen in the same month here, so closest cannot mean warmest.

If the seasons came from distance, January would be the hot month in Michigan. It is not. When the Northern Hemisphere tilts toward the Sun, sunlight hits Michigan more directly and the days run longer. That part of the year is summer. When the Northern Hemisphere tilts away, the light spreads more thinly and the days are shorter. That part of the year is winter, even in a January when Earth is nearest the Sun.

Tilt is not a nickname for a change in distance. The distance from Earth to the Sun does change a little across the year. The change is real, and it is still not what makes the seasons. January is the month I want you to picture: snow on the harbor, and Earth at its closest.

Your cousin, Imani

On a clear night by the pier light in St. Joseph, the Moon is a thin crescent. Coach Reza tells the running club that the Moon is a ball in sunlight. About half of that ball 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. A crescent is a view of the lit half, not Earth's shadow.

He has Nina hold a softball toward a porch lamp. The side facing the lamp is bright. As she turns the ball, the bright part looks like a crescent, then a half, then a full face, then a crescent again. The dark portion is the side facing away from the lamp. Coach Reza checks that nobody's body stands between the lamp and the ball. The dark portion is still there. Nothing has cast a shadow across the ball.

Earth's shadow is a different event. When Earth blocks the Sun's light from reaching the Moon, that event is a lunar eclipse. A lunar eclipse is rare. It is not the crescent the club sees on an ordinary night. A runner says the dark part of every crescent is Earth's shadow. Coach Reza points at the softball. The lamp's light is not blocked, and the dark portion remains. Phases are the lit half, seen from changing places. They are not Earth's shadow, and they are not the rare eclipse.

A farm note from an orchard on Old Mission Peninsula, north of Traverse City, explains one July morning. The crew shakes two rows of tart cherries into a catching frame. Those cherries will be washed and frozen for bakeries. Nobody picks them one by one. The note says the shaker is the method for fruit that will be sold for processing.

One row stays unshaken. Pickers fill flats by hand for a stand at the end of the lane. Hand picking is slower, and the fruit is handled so it can be sold fresh. The two methods match two different buyers. Using the shaker on the processing rows is the plan, not a mistake.

A visitor tells the crew that a machine ruins every cherry it touches. The note answers with the farm's split. The shaken cherries are gathered for freezing, not thrown out. The fresh cherries never go under the shaker. Two shaken rows and one hand-picked row are the whole plan for the morning.

The note's last line is about weather. The shaker stops if rain starts, because wet fruit bruises in the frame. The hand pickers can keep going under the row covers. Rain changes the machine's job. It does not erase the fresh row.

On a March Saturday, students from Anna River Middle School in Munising walk to a sugar camp in the woods behind the soccer field. A board nailed to the boil shack explains the week. Sap runs when the nights fall below freezing and the days climb above freezing. This week the nights were 26 degrees and the days were 41. The buckets filled. The board says a warm spell with nights that stay above freezing can shut the run off, even if the trees are sugar maples.

The students measure 40 gallons of sap. The board states that 40 gallons of sap are boiled down to make 1 gallon of syrup. Jordan says the camp therefore has 40 gallons of syrup to sell at the game. The board's next line corrects that idea. Forty is the sap. Boiling drives off water. The syrup that remains is 1 gallon.

The boil is done in the shack, on a pan over a wood fire. The buckets on the trees only catch the drip. Students empty those buckets before dark, because sap that sits overnight can turn sour. Catching and boiling are two jobs.

The board ends with a warning printed in red: do not drink from a bucket. Sap is watery, and it is not finished syrup. Visitors may smell the steam at the shack door. They may not dip a cup into the pan or a bucket.

The school paper at Arcadian Middle School in Kalamazoo prints two letters under one headline. The headline says both writers want the June band concert to happen, and they disagree about the place.

Lena wants the concert at Bronson Park. Last year 420 people came. The gym holds 250. She says rain is a risk, and the music room stores tarps that can cover the speakers. Her argument is about space, and the tarps are her answer to the weather.

Chris wants the concert in the gym. Last June a storm soaked the speakers at the park, and the repair took nine days. He says 250 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 pick a winner. It prints the shared aim, then the two places, then the numbers each writer uses. A box under the letters says the principal will decide on Monday.

A Saturday sheet at Division Middle School in Grand Rapids compares two ways from the school to the John Ball Zoo. The river path is 4 miles and takes about 35 minutes on a bike. It is flat, and riders must walk their bikes across the pedestrian bridge. That walk is already included in the 35 minutes. A rider should not add another 10 minutes on top of 35. The city bus is 5 miles and takes about 20 minutes once the rider is on board. Buses come at 9:05 a.m. and 9:45 a.m. The sheet says the 20 minutes does not include the wait at the stop.

Nia says she will bike because fewer miles means she will arrive first. The sheet does not say that. Four miles on the path can take longer than 5 miles on the bus. Omar dislikes waiting at the stop, so he bikes and accepts the extra minutes. Nia changes her plan when she sees the feeding talk at 9:30. She takes the 9:05 bus, which the sheet says reaches the gate at about 9:25.

The middle of the sheet is a comparison. It sets the routes side by side on miles, then on minutes, then on the bridge. It does not narrate one trip from the school door to the zoo gate. The goal picks the route. Fewer miles means the path. Less time on the move means the bus, if the rider makes the 9:05 and does not count a long wait.

January locked the harbor at Marquette under a tin-colored sky. The ore dock's long arm held still, a ruler no one used. Snow wrote soft commas on the black water and then erased them before a reader could finish.

A kid on the breakwall counted freighters that were not there. Each empty minute was a locker with no coat inside. When one horn finally sounded, far and low, the sound was a door opening in a house across town.

We did not run. We passed the thermos, sweet with cocoa, and watched the horn's echo sit down on the ice. The harbor kept its quiet a little longer. The ship, when it came, was only a thicker dark.

A panel at Arcadia Marsh, on the Lake Michigan shore near Arcadia, explains the raised walkway. Spring water spreads across the grass. The raised boards let people cross without packing the mud into a hard path. Packed mud, the panel says, sheds water instead of holding it, and the wet meadow needs to hold water.

Volunteers cut a strip of tall reed along one ditch. The panel names that strip and shows it on a small map. It does not say every tall plant in the marsh will be cut. The reed spreads fast and crowds the shorter plants that ducks use. Cutting the named strip gives those shorter plants room.

A visitor writes that the marsh should be mowed like a lawn. The panel is solving a different problem. A lawn would remove the cover the birds need. On this panel, cutting is limited to the reed strip.

High water covers the lower boards in April. In August the mud shows between the grass. Walkers are told to stay on the boards in both seasons, because feet beside the boards press the seedlings flat. The panel's last sentence says the marsh is a place that floods on purpose, and the boards are how people visit without undoing that flood.

Nora's article is about the city windmill in Holland on a Saturday. Long ago, when this mill worked in the Netherlands, its sails turned to grind grain for a town. Here, the miller grinds one small sack of wheat at 1:00 p.m. so visitors can see the stones move. The afternoon grind is a demonstration. It does not supply the bakeries in Holland with their flour.

A classmate tells Nora that moving sails mean the mill is filling grocery orders. Nora checks the gift-shop board. The board says the sack is poured out for the crowd to smell, then bagged as samples. The stones demonstrate a process. That process is not a shift that stocks a store.

The miller holds up a handful of warm meal and says one pair of stones can break a kernel. The article does not turn that sentence into a lesson on how to dress a millstone. It never lists those steps. Nora's point is the gap between a mill that once fed a town and a demonstration that now teaches a crowd.

Visitors may stand inside the marked rail. They may not climb the sail frame. Nora prints those two rules side by side so a reader will not treat the mill as a place to climb.

Riverside Middle School in Detroit posts a Saturday board for the outdoor rink beside the building. Family skate is 12:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. Helmets are required for every skater in that block, and a child under 7 must hold an adult's hand. Hockey skills is 2:30 p.m. to 3:45 p.m., for ages 13 and up. Family skating stops during hockey skills. The warming room stays open until 5:00 p.m. The ice times are not the room times.

Devon is 12. He and his father arrive at 12:45 p.m. Devon may skate then if he wears a helmet. The under-7 hand rule does not apply to him, because he is 12. He may not join hockey skills. He is not yet 13, and family skating is not mixed into that block.

If Devon arrives at 2:10 p.m., family skate is over and hockey skills has not started. He can wait in the warming room. He cannot go on the ice at 2:10, and he still cannot enter hockey skills at 2:30. A cousin says the school locks the warming room when family skate ends at 2:00. The board keeps family skate, hockey skills, and the warming room on separate lines.

For a workshop night, the garden club at Oakman Middle School in Dearborn makes a three-minute video about planting beans. The pictures show the same steps from start to finish: wet the soil, set the seeds, cover them, and water again. English captions run along the bottom. Arabic captions run just above them. The words match. A family can follow either line and plant the same way.

One member, Sam, wants to drop the Arabic to finish faster. He says one language is enough if the pictures are clear. The club president, Hana, disagrees. She brings a sign-in sheet from last October. Fourteen families at that workshop used the Arabic captions, and those families completed the planting. The sheet is her evidence. Her claim is that both caption lines should stay.

Hana also answers the worry about time. The video is three minutes with both lines, and it was three minutes in a test copy that used only English. Adding the Arabic line did not lengthen the pictures. The change Sam wants would remove a line of words. It would not shorten the film.

The article stops after the workshop plan. It does not give a recipe for bean soup, and it does not name a store. Its job is the disagreement about the captions and the sheet Hana used.

On the RiverWalk in Detroit, Samira agrees to watch her cousin Malik, who is seven, while their aunt buys water. Malik sits on a blue bench facing the river. A drum circle starts near the railing. Samira takes three steps toward the drums, then stops. Three steps is still close enough to see the bench.

A dancer waves her in. Samira shakes her head and stays at the edge of the circle, where the bench remains in sight. Malik holds up a stone he is not allowed to throw. Samira calls his name once. He puts the stone in his pocket and grins. She does not join the dance.

When the aunt returns, she asks if the drums were good. Samira says they were loud and near. She does not say she danced. The aunt looks at Malik's pocket, sees the stone, and asks who stopped the throw. Malik points at Samira.

The story ends with Samira's line: "I wanted the circle, and I kept the bench." The want and the choice are both in that line. She did not get to dance. She did keep watch, and Malik kept the stone.

The Saturday sheet at a blueberry stand in South Haven counts pints for the school booth. Three crates are in the shade tent. Each crate holds 8 pints. The sheet tells volunteers to multiply: 3 × 8 = 24 pints in all.

A helper adds 3 + 8 and writes 11 pints on the chalkboard. The stand owner circles the plus sign and replaces it with a times sign. Eleven is not the count of the berries. Twenty-four is.

The owner sets aside 9 pints for muffins. Twenty-four minus 9 leaves 15 pints for the cups of fresh berries. The muffin card needs those 9 pints, and they stay at the muffin table. They are not poured back into the fresh-berry cups. The sheet's last line says the fresh-berry table should plan on 15, not on 24.

A school nature center beside Sleeping Bear Dunes, near Empire, hands families a card with two walks. The dune climb is short in distance and long in effort. The card lists it as 0.3 mile and about 25 minutes up, then 20 minutes down. It says to add those times: 25 + 20 = 45 minutes in all. The way down is part of the 45. A family should not plan the climb as 25 minutes and forget the return.

The forest loop is 1.6 miles and about 40 minutes. It stays under the trees and does not climb the open dune. The card warns that the dune clock is not a flat-trail clock. A short distance on loose sand can take longer than a longer distance on a packed forest path.

The Hassan family has 50 minutes before the visitor-center program. The forest loop's 40 minutes fits inside that 50, with time left to walk to the program room. The dune climb's 45 minutes also fits only if they start at once and add no stop. A stop at the overlook is extra, and it is not included in the 45.

The card's last box is about shoes and wind, not about a third trail. Soft sand fills open sandals. The dune climb needs closed shoes. The forest loop can be walked in the sneakers the family already has on. Wind on the open dune is stronger than wind under the trees. The card does not say the forest is always the better walk. It says the time you have, and the shoes you are wearing, decide which line on the card you can keep.