New Jersey Student Learning Assessments English Language Arts Grade 8

1 The bridge lifts, and our road becomes a wall of steel. / 2 We wait with two bikes on the gravel shoulder in Brielle. / 3 A white cabin cruiser eases through like a slow sentence. / 4 Its wake taps the pylons in short, polite knocks.

5 My brother counts the cars stacked behind the gate. / 6 He says, "The bridge is rude to keep us." / 7 I watch the mast clear the gap by a hand's width. / 8 Rude is not the word I hold for that thin mercy.

9 A horn returns the road to the wheels. / 10 We pedal before the light allows the cars. / 11 The water keeps the boat's shape for a moment, then forgets. / 12 I drop the count of cars and keep the width of the hand.

A painted board beside a lock on the Delaware and Raritan Canal at Griggstown says the chamber fills in ten minutes. The class from Orchard Street Middle School in Franklin Township calls the lock King Lock on its own map. On April 18 the students timed a fill. Their log shows sixteen minutes from the first rise of the water to the mark painted on the chamber wall.

The same log notes that the feeder gate above the lock was half shut that morning. A canal volunteer had closed it partway so a work boat could pass upstream. The volunteer tells the class that the painted board describes a fill when that gate is open all the way. The board does not mention a half-shut gate.

A classmate writes that the board must be wrong because sixteen is not ten. The log does not call the board a mistake. It writes, "Different opening, different fill." The water still climbed to the same painted mark. It climbed more slowly while the gate was only partly open.

The class labels a diagram with two arrows. A red arrow marks the full opening and the ten-minute board. A blue arrow marks April 18, the half-shut gate, and sixteen minutes. The diagram does not claim that every fill in every month takes sixteen minutes. It claims that this opening and this morning match the longer time.

Before the evening rush, Lila sorted tickets at the Paper Gull booth on the Point Pleasant Beach boardwalk. The gold roll was for boxes of saltwater taffy. The blue roll was for cups of lemonade. Her uncle had said, "Gold leaves with a box. Blue stays with a cup." A sign on the counter read, "One gold ticket, one box."

A boy asked for lemonade and held out a gold ticket. Lila shook her head and tore a blue ticket instead. He said she was saving the gold roll for her friends. She slid the lemonade across and left the gold roll in the drawer. She did not take his gold ticket. The sign was about boxes, and his hands held no box.

When her uncle returned from the freezer, the gold roll was as thick as he had left it, and the blue roll was shorter by the cups he could count. He said, "You kept the colors apart." Lila was not sure the sentence was about being polite. It fit the two rolls, the sign, and the instruction from before the rush.

At closing, a box of taffy had split. Lila ate one piece over the bin. She did not tear a gold ticket for it. The piece had not been sold. The gold roll was for boxes that left the booth, and this piece never did.

The town council in Mount Arlington held a hearing about floats on Lake Hopatcong. Speaker Cole asked for a ban on inflatable floats before noon. She read a tally from Saturday, September 6: 30 floats were in the water before noon. Then she said, "This tally proves a ban will empty the beach." The tally counts floats on that morning. It does not count beach visitors on any day after a ban, because no ban had started.

Speaker Diaz agreed that 30 floats were counted. She said all 30 were tied to one club dock during a group outing. Inside the swim buoy, the same tally sheet lists 11 swimmers and no floats. The club dock sits outside the buoy. Diaz asked the council to ban floats only inside the buoy line. She did not ask to clear the club dock, and she did not say the beach had no people.

The sentence "This tally proves a ban will empty the beach" does more than report the number 30. The word "proves" treats one morning's float count as if it already measured an empty beach in the future. The rest of Cole's tally does not contain that measurement.

The clerk's page records only the vote. Floats are banned inside the buoy for one month. The club dock is left as it was. The page does not name the speaker who persuaded the council. It records the line of the ban and the length of the month.

A class from Bayonet Street Middle School in Highlands kept a fog book for six mornings on a beach path at Sandy Hook. They did not grade the lighthouse. They studied how far a student could see a yellow pail set on the sand. Each morning at 7:10 they wrote "clear," "soft," or "closed." Clear meant the pail looked sharp from the path post. Soft meant the pail was a smear. Closed meant the pail could not be seen from that post.

On Tuesday the book says closed. A photo from that same minute shows the yellow pail, with a student standing beside it. A visitor said the photo proves Tuesday was clear. The log says the photographer stood three steps from the pail. The student who wrote "closed" stood at the path post, forty steps away. The photo and the word closed both describe Tuesday. They describe different distances.

In the margin the teacher wrote, "Closed names the path post, not the pail's existence." The sentence tells a reader how to use the word in this book. It does not say anyone removed the pail, and it does not say the beach was shut to walkers.

By Friday the book had two closed mornings, three soft mornings, and one clear morning. The class conclusion says fog at the post can hide a pail that a person beside it can still photograph. The book does not claim that boats offshore lost their way. It stays with the pail, the post, and the six mornings.

Students visiting from Pemberton filled two bottles from the same cedar creek near Chatsworth, a creek they named Tea Run. Both bottles looked like weak tea. Bottle A sat still on a bench. Bottle B was shaken for thirty seconds and then set down. After twenty minutes, both bottles still looked brown.

The class poured each bottle through a clean filter paper. Both papers stayed free of grit. A classmate said the brown color means mud, and that Bottle B must be dirtier because it was shaken. The log disagrees about the mud. It says the color is cedar stain from leaves in the water. It says the papers caught no grit. It says shaking did not add soil.

The log's sentence is, "Shaking did not add soil the creek did not already hold." That sentence answers the classmate. It ties the brown in both bottles to the same creek. It does not say the water is safe to drink, and the class posts no such claim.

The write-up uses the result only for the color. The students decide to describe Tea Run as stained, not muddy, when they talk about these two bottles. They do not claim that every brown creek in the pines is free of grit. They claim that these papers, on this day, caught none.

At the Blue Clock, a diner on Thistle Lane in Freehold, a sign over the pie case reads, "Pie until close." At 8 p.m. the case was empty. A customer told Jonah, who was busing tables, that the sign was a lie. She wanted coconut pie and could see none.

In the kitchen, one coconut slice sat on a plate. A ticket under the plate said "hold for Booth 4." The cook told Jonah the slice had been plated for a nurse who called ahead. The case was empty because the slice had been moved, not because the diner had stopped serving pie. Jonah left the slice on the hold plate. He offered rice pudding, which the board also listed until close. The customer took the pudding and said Jonah had hidden the good dessert.

Booth 4 arrived at 8:20, still in scrubs, and took the coconut slice. The manager said, "The ticket was the truth in the kitchen." Jonah wrote the sentence on his order pad so he would remember why he had not served the slice early.

The sign stayed up until the diner closed at 9. No second coconut slice appeared. The one slice left with Booth 4. The empty case at 8 and the sign "Pie until close" were both in the room at the same time, and the ticket is what made them fit.

The town council in Kearny heard comments about a path through a town lot called Stitch Meadow, a reed patch beside the Hackensack. Speaker Patel asked the council to stop the path. She read a May count: 14 red-winged blackbirds rose from the wet center of the lot. She said, "That rise proves the path will drive every bird out of Kearny." The count is one lot on one morning. It does not follow birds through the rest of the town.

Speaker Nguyen said he wanted the path on the mowed edge, not through the wet center. He agreed that 14 birds rose. He also said they settled again in the center when the students who flushed them walked back to the sidewalk. He did not say the lot had no birds. He said an edge path would leave the center they used.

The sentence "That rise proves the path will drive every bird out of Kearny" turns one flush into a town-wide forecast. The word "proves" treats the rise as a measurement of every bird's future. Patel's count does not contain that measurement. It contains 14 birds, one lot, and one morning.

The council voted to build the path only on the mowed edge and to leave the wet center unpaved for the season. The minutes do not declare a winning speaker. They record the edge, the center, and the season.

Students at Loom Street Middle School in Paterson built a wooden channel in the courtyard and named it Bolt Run. A hose at one end ran for the whole test. A strip of tape on the faucet marked the flow they wanted. Paper boats traveled from the hose to a string at the far end. The log calls that distance one length.

On the first trial a boat took 12 seconds. On the second trial the same boat took 20 seconds. A student said the hose must have been turned down. The tape was still on the same line, and the log says no one moved the faucet. What changed was a thin scarf of wet leaves that the second boat pushed against the string. The first boat had met a clear string.

The recorder wrote, "The tape did not move, so the faucet is not the plot." The sentence points the reader at the leaves. It does not say the hose was off. It says the marked flow stayed put while the time changed.

The class cleared the leaves and ran a third trial. That boat took 12 seconds again. The log treats the third trial as a check on the first. It does not claim that every paper boat in Paterson takes 12 seconds. It claims that, on this channel, a clear string and the taped flow match the shorter time.

In June, Nia helped at her grandmother's blueberry stand on a farm lane outside Hammonton. Her grandmother had a sore throat and pointed instead of calling prices. Rubber bands marked the pint handles. A chart on the cooler said red means pie berries, soft, for people who will bake today. Green means firm berries that can ride to another town. Nia had not read the chart when the first customer arrived.

The customer wanted berries that would last until Sunday in Cherry Hill. The red-banded pints looked brighter, and Nia thought of a stop sign, so she pulled the red row forward. The customer pressed a berry, and juice dotted the cardboard. Grandmother tapped the cooler chart, then the green row. Nia switched the stack. The customer took green pints and thanked her grandmother.

Nia read the chart twice. At this stand, red is not a warning and not a discard pile. It is the pie row. The brighter color and the juice come from berries picked at dawn and banded for the same day. She moved the red pints into the shade under the awning, where the chart's drawing shows them.

At closing, her grandmother wrote on a paper bag, "You asked the chart." Nia kept the bag. The sentence names the step that fixed the stack. It is not a line about how fast Nia walked, and it is not a complaint about the sore throat.

A painted plank at the municipal dock in Atlantic Highlands says the Two-Whistle Skiff crosses to a sand spit called Norton Bar in eight minutes. The skiff is a volunteer boat. It sounds one whistle when it leaves and a second whistle when it ties up. On May 2 a class timed a crossing at fourteen minutes.

The log says the tide was running out. It also says the skiff waited three minutes for a barge to clear the channel before the second whistle. A note from the dock captain says the plank times a slack-water crossing with no wait. The plank does not include a barge, and it does not mention an outgoing tide.

A student called the plank a lie because fourteen is not eight. The captain's note answers, "Subtract the wait, and the push of the tide is still not the slack-water trip." Even without the three-minute wait, the ride was longer than eight minutes because the tide was going out. The note does not throw out the plank. It limits when the eight minutes apply.

The class posts two labels under the plank. One label reads: slack water, no wait, eight minutes. The other reads: May 2, outgoing tide plus a barge wait, fourteen minutes. The labels do not say every future trip will take fourteen minutes.

The library board in Orange met about Saturday hours at the Main Street branch. Speaker Ruiz asked to close the branch on Saturdays. She cited a count of 12 people between 10 and 11 a.m. on a rainy Saturday. She said, "Twelve people prove the branch can close for the day." The full sheet for that same Saturday lists 64 visitors from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Speaker Cole agreed that the 10 o'clock hour had 12 people. She said 40 of the 64 came after noon, many of them for a homework room that opens at 12. She asked the board to keep noon to 5 and to drop only the first two hours. She did not say the morning hour was crowded. She said the morning count is real and too small to stand for the whole sheet.

The sentence "Twelve people prove the branch can close for the day" uses one hour as if it were the whole day. The word "prove" skips the later hours already written on that sheet. A count of 12 can be exact and still fail as a reason to close at noon.

The board voted to open Saturdays from noon to 5 through the winter. The minutes quote the new hours. They do not quote either speaker as the winner of the hearing.

At practice for the 4x200 at Elmwood Middle School in East Orange, Imani waited at the third-leg exchange. Chris, the incoming runner, pulled up with a shoe split at the toe. The baton was still in Chris's hand. Coach Rios had told the team that a runner who still has the baton may hand it off, and a runner who leaves the lane may not.

Chris stayed in the lane and held the baton out at the chalk mark. Imani took it there and ran the third leg. A teammate on the grass yelled that Imani had stolen the leg to get a faster time. Imani had not stepped in early. She took the baton only after it was offered, and only where the chalk says the exchange ends.

At the finish Coach Rios said, quietly, "The lane kept the handoff honest." Imani copied the sentence into her notebook. She read it as a reminder of the rule they already had. She did not read it as a prize for taking someone else's spot on the roster.

After practice Chris taped the shoe. The rep book lists Imani on third for that one run. Tomorrow's roster sheet still prints Chris on third. The rep changed. The roster did not. Both papers were on the clipboard at the end of practice, and they name different things.

A tour board at a cranberry bog near Chatsworth, a bog the class calls Pink Ditch, shows two pictures of the same ditches. A sign reads, "This bog is dry," and the date painted under the words is June 12. The next panel is a photograph of the ditches full of water. Its caption says, "Harvest flood, October 3." A visitor said one of the two must be a mistake.

The grower guiding the class said the vines grow in summer with the ditches low. The farm calls that a dry-down. In October the crew floods the bog so ripe berries can float for harvest. The June sign and the October photo are both on the board because they show two kinds of work. They do not show the bog at one hour.

Under the photo the board prints, "Dry-down and flood are both work." The sentence tells a visitor not to pick a winner between the pictures. It does not say the ditches are full and empty in the same minute.

The class log says the students visited on June 12 and saw mud in the ditches, not a lake. They did not see the October flood. They saw its caption. Their conclusion stays with the board: the word dry is dated, the flood is dated, and the dates do not match.

The student council at Pier Street Middle School in Hoboken debated the courtyard elm. Speaker Benowitz moved to cut the tree down. A March inspection had found one cracked limb over the bench. She said, "One cracked limb proves the whole tree is done." The same inspection says the trunk is sound. It names the limb as a single branch that can be shortened.

Speaker Alvarez agreed that the limb is cracked. He asked the council to shorten that limb and keep the tree. He pointed to the page that calls the trunk sound and notes that the bench can be moved two meters. He did not say the crack was imaginary. He said a crack in one limb is not a verdict on the trunk.

The sentence "One cracked limb proves the whole tree is done" stretches a limb note over the whole elm. The inspection's own word for the branch is "shorten," not "remove." The word "proves" is doing work the page does not do.

Council voted to move the bench and to shorten the limb, and to ask a city arborist before any cut. The minutes list those two actions and the request. They do not award the debate to either speaker.

Andre stacked corn for Ms. Pell at the Saturday market in a school lot in Collingswood. The ears came from her farm in Hunterdon County. Crate 1 had a stamped dot on each ear and was for boiling that day. Crate 2 had no dots and was for a cookout later in the week. Ms. Pell said, "Dot means today." The chalkboard said the same thing.

A shopper wanted corn for a Tuesday cookout. The dotted ears looked brighter, so she reached into Crate 1. Andre slid that crate back and pointed to the undotted ears. The shopper said he was saving the bright ears for another seller. He had no second stand. The dotted ears were brighter because they had been picked at dawn. They were also the ones that would not keep until Tuesday.

The shopper took a dozen undotted ears. People who said "tonight" took the dotted ones, and that crate was half gone by noon. Ms. Pell came back from the truck and said, "Brightness was the clock, not the prize." Andre understood the sentence to mean that the shine marked a short life, not a higher rank.

He moved the remaining dotted ears under the canopy, out of the sun, the way Ms. Pell had shown him at dawn. The undotted crate stayed at the front edge, where Tuesday shoppers could see it. The two crates never became one pile.

After a night of rain, a neighbor on Linden Lane in Bordentown told a class from Prince Street Middle School that the corner drain was clogged. At 8 a.m. a puddle covered the crosswalk. The neighbor said, "If it is sitting now, it sits all day." A photo from 8 a.m. shows a mat of wet leaves spread over the grate.

The class log at noon says the custodian peeled the leaf mat off the grate. By 12:40 the crosswalk was damp, but the puddle was gone, and the drain gurgled. A second photo shows the bare grate. No one opened the pipe or replaced it. The only change the log records is the removal of the leaves.

The recorder wrote, "Morning described the mat, not the pipe." The sentence separates the lid the class could see from a broken pipe they never found. It does not claim the pipe is new. It claims the leaves were what held the water at 8 a.m.

A student said the neighbor had lied. The log says the neighbor told the truth about 8 a.m. The forecast that the water would sit all day is the part the afternoon photo does not support. The morning puddle and the bare grate at 12:40 can both be reported. Only the all-day forecast fails.