New York State Testing Program English Language Arts Grade 4

On a bright October morning, fourth grade from Kingston rode to Hill Orchard in Milton. A wooden press stood under a tent. Cut apples filled a deep bin. Mr. Bell, the host, rested a hand on the crank. "This press does not run by itself," he said. "If hands stop turning the crank, the juice stops."

Lena held an empty cup and stayed by the tasting table. "The apples are already cut," she said. "The machine should finish the job." Classmates took turns at the crank. Juice clicked into a metal pan.

Then the helpers stepped back to trade places, and no one took the handle. The crank slowed. Drops fell, then nothing. Mr. Bell looked at the still handle. "We still have a bin of apples, but the juice has stopped because no one is turning."

Lena set her cup on the table and gripped the crank with Tomas and Priya. The pan began to fill again. When the bin was empty, Mr. Bell poured the cups. Lena tasted hers. "I thought the press worked alone," she said. "It needed our hands the whole time."

Fourth grade from a school in Lockport stood on a walkway beside the Erie Canal. A small tour boat waited in a stone lock. The water in the lock was low, and the upper gate was shut. Malik pointed at the boat. "It will climb a ramp," he said. "I do not see one yet, but a ramp must be how it goes up."

Guide Ms. Pruitt shook her head and pointed to a metal valve. "Watch the valve, not a ramp. When we open the valve from the higher canal, water flows into the lock. The boat rises because the water under it rises."

She opened the valve. Water poured through the opening. The boat did not roll up a slope. It stayed level while the waterline climbed the stone walls. Malik stared. "There is no ramp under it. The water is doing the lifting."

When the water in the lock matched the upper canal, Ms. Pruitt opened the gate. The boat moved forward onto the higher part of the canal. "The valve let the water in," she said. "The water did the rest."

I stood in the children's room of a library in Forest Hills, Queens. A paper sign above the desk said Quiet. I needed a book about subway maps for a class project, but I shut my mouth. If quiet meant no talking, then asking would break the rule. I walked to the door with empty hands.

Mr. Adeyemi, the librarian, met me there. "You look like you are leaving without a book," he said. I pointed at the sign. "Quiet means I cannot ask. I did not want to get in trouble."

He tapped the sign gently. "Quiet means soft voices in this room. It does not mean you cannot ask for help. A question in a quiet voice is still welcome."

I asked, in a small voice, for a book with subway maps. Mr. Adeyemi led me to a shelf and pulled one down. On the way out I read the sign again. The word had not changed, but I finally knew what it was asking me to do.

Our class from East Hampton kept a trip log for Montauk Point. At 8:10 the bus left school. I wrote that the sky was clear, but the driver said the point is often windier than town.

At 9:05 we reached the lighthouse grounds. The wind pushed my notebook page flat against my jacket. Ranger Cole met us by a rope. "The lamp room is closed for cleaning today," he said. "The outside gallery is open. Photos from the gallery are fine. Photos from the lamp room are not, because that door stays shut."

At 9:40 we climbed to the gallery. I wanted the lamp room, but the door there had a paper sign that said Closed. I stayed on the gallery walk and photographed the water. The light itself was out of reach, and I did not touch the door.

At 11:20 the bus loaded. I wrote one last line: we saw the point from the open gallery, and the lamp room stayed closed the whole visit.

I helped Aunt Rosa at her table at the Ithaca Farmers' Market. A bushel basket of peppers sat by her boots, so full that the top peppers rested above the rim. She sold those from the front of the table.

A tomato rolled toward me, soft and dark on one side. "That one is bruised," Aunt Rosa said. "Bruised means it got bumped, so the skin went soft. Put bruised tomatoes in the sauce box. Buyers still want them for cooking. Leave the firm tomatoes on the display."

Next she held up a bunch of spinach. The leaves drooped like tired flags. "These are wilted. Wilted leaves are not crisp anymore. They go in the soup bag, not in the sprinkle pile for sandwiches."

By noon the sauce box and the soup bag were both sold. A man told Aunt Rosa he had almost walked past the soft tomato. She smiled. "Food can look less than perfect and still belong in a pot."

Snow closed school in Buffalo, the heavy kind that piles on steps before lunch. Amira and her father shoveled their own front walk on Lafayette Avenue. Across the street, Ms. Kenner's porch light was on in the daytime.

"On this block, that light is a signal," Dad said. "It means she would like a neighbor to check. Her knee has been sore, and deep snow traps the door."

They crossed with the shovel. Ms. Kenner opened the inner door but stopped at the storm door because snow held it. Amira and Dad cleared the steps and the short walk. Ms. Kenner came out with a towel for the wet rail. "I turned the light on because I could not move the snow myself," she said.

Back home, Amira looked at their own dark porch. "If we had only done our steps, her door would still be stuck," she said. Dad nodded. "The light asked, and we answered."

The class from Poughkeepsie walked onto the Walkway Over the Hudson. The path ran high above the river. Omar stopped at the rail and grinned. "The best part is the height," he said. "I can see so far that the cars below look like beads."

Priya stood at the same rail and pointed lower. "The best part is the river work," she said. "A barge is pushing upstream, and a small boat is crossing near the far bank. I care more about what moves on the water than about how high we are."

Their teacher, Mr. Lang, did not pick a winner. "You are on one bridge, and you are noticing different things," he said. "Omar is reading the distance. Priya is reading the traffic. Both observations belong in your trip notes."

Omar wrote about the long view. Priya drew the barge and the small boat. When they traded notebooks, each page showed the walkway, but not the same story of it.

At a city museum in Albany, fourth grade visited a room called Roads in Every Season. The left wall was the winter display. A painted ice road crossed a frozen lake in the Adirondacks. The label, written by the museum, said sleds used that road when the ice was thick enough to hold them. A red rope kept visitors off the fake ice.

The right wall was the summer display. It showed a dirt road after a storm near a farm outside Albany. The label said wagons waited until the mud dried, because wheels sank in the wet track. A second red rope kept visitors off the mud model.

Our worksheet asked us to keep the seasons apart. Winter travel on that wall depended on thick ice. Summer travel on the other wall depended on dry ground. Both displays showed a road that did not work in every kind of weather. I wrote that the room was built to set those two problems side by side.

Near Lake Placid, our class visited Ms. Pell's sugar house. Metal taps sat in maple trunks, and clear sap dripped into buckets. Jonah folded his arms. "A tap is a deep cut," he said. "The tree must hate it. You are hurting it for syrup."

Ms. Pell touched a small hole, no wider than her thumb. "This tap is shallow, and we use a healthy tree. The tree closes a small tap hole later. We are not chopping the trunk down."

She talked about the weather next. "Sap runs when nights stay cold and days turn warm. If both the night and the day stay cold, the sap waits in the tree. Last Tuesday stayed cold all day, and these buckets stayed empty."

Inside, sap boiled in a long pan until it thickened into syrup. Jonah watched a drop fall from a tap. "I thought any hole was damage," he said. "A small tap in a healthy tree is different, and the sap still needs the right weather."

Ranger Diaz met our class from Freeport at Jones Beach with a sack and a pair of gloves for each student. "We are picking up plastic, not shells," he said. "Leave the shells for the beach."

Chris held up one bottle cap. "This is tiny. One cap cannot matter." Ranger Diaz did not argue yet. He pointed at the tide line. "Pick up every cap you see for twenty minutes. Then we will look at the sack together."

The class walked the line. Caps hid in seaweed and beside a broken pail. At the end, the sack had a lumpy bottom. Ranger Diaz shook it. "Tiny pieces add up. Birds can mistake small plastic for food. A cap left in the sand can become a meal a bird should not eat."

Chris tied his glove tighter. "I thought one cap was nothing. The sack is heavy because we each found more than one." He dropped two more caps in before we reached the bus.

Room 12 at a school in Rochester performs this short play. A coatroom bench and a box of puppets are the whole set. Mina speaks for the rabbit puppet. Eli speaks for the bear puppet.

MINA: My mitten is gone. I checked the bench, so somebody took it.

ELI: I did not take it. Look at your coat before you blame the whole room.

MINA: I already looked. The bench is bare. The mitten has to be stolen.

ELI: Your sleeve is fat. Shake it.

Mina shakes the coat. The mitten falls out of the sleeve. She is quiet, then she laughs.

MINA: It was on me the whole time. I was so sure the bench told the whole story that I blamed the room.

ELI: The bench was one place. It was not the only place.

Dear Cousin Andre,

I have been in Port Richmond on Staten Island for three weeks. My new school has a hill behind the playground, and we roll in the grass when the ground is dry. I miss our old block in Yonkers, but I do not miss waiting for the elevator.

On Saturday Mom and I walked to a bakery that sells warm rolls at seven in the morning. I saved you the corner piece of one roll and then I ate it. I am sorry and also not sorry. Next time I will buy two.

If you visit, bring your sneakers. The hill is the first place I want to show you. Write back and tell me which Saturday you can come.

Your cousin, Lila

The rooftop garden at a Bronx school had two lettuce boxes and one tomato tub. Mr. Santos, the garden leader, pointed at a pale cloth stretched on poles. "This shade cloth is for the lettuce. Lettuce in full sun on this roof turns bitter. Lettuce under the cloth stays tender."

The tomato tub sat in the open sun. "Tomatoes want that heat," Mr. Santos said. "Do not slide the cloth over them. Shade that helps lettuce would slow the tomatoes."

Last month a class left both lettuce boxes in the sun. The leaves grew tall and bitter, and the students could not use them in salad. This month Hana's class kept the cloth over the lettuce and left the tomatoes uncovered.

A week later Hana bit a leaf from the shaded box. It was tender. A tomato on the sunny tub had blushed red. "Same roof," she said, "but not the same kind of light for each plant."

The fourth-grade news team at a school in Schenectady wrote this report.

Problem: The playground gate stuck every morning. Students had to squeeze through a narrow gap. The wooden edge rubbed the post, and little children could not push it alone.

What we tried: Our class wrote to Mr. Alvarez, the custodian. We did not buy a new gate. He planed the wooden edge, which means he shaved off a thin curl so the gate could pass the post. Then we painted the bare spot so rain would not start the rub again.

Result: On Monday the gate swung open for a kindergartner without help. The gap is gone because the gate now meets the post without sticking. We will check the paint after the next rain.

I hear the Niagara River before I see it. The roar is a drum that does not need a player. I stay behind the safe rail and let the sound arrive first.

Then the mist lifts like a veil someone forgot to tie. The water below is white where it argues with the rocks. Farther out, it turns green and smooth, as if it has decided to behave.

My jacket beads with spray. I do not lean over. Power can be beautiful from a careful distance. I came to listen and look, not to test the rail.

On a creek near Cooperstown, Ranger Ibarra showed our class a dam made of sticks and mud. Water slowed there and spread into a quiet pond. "Beavers built this," she said. "The dam is their door and their pantry wall. It is not a mess they forgot to clean."

Owen kicked a pebble into the current. "It looks like clutter. The creek was fine as a straight line." Ranger Ibarra pointed to three ducks resting on the pond. "The slowed water gives them a place to pause. A fast creek would carry them past this bend."

She showed us a notch where someone had pulled sticks out. "Where the dam is open, the water rushes, and the pond drops. When the beavers repair the notch, the pond rises again. The height of this water depends on that wall of sticks."

Owen watched a duck tuck its beak under a wing. "I called it clutter. The ducks are using the pond the dam made."

Before school, Theo helped Uncle Wen in a bakery on Mott Street in Chinatown. The first batch of buns went into a round steamer. Theo was curious and lifted the lid halfway through. A cloud rushed out. The buns stayed pale.

Uncle Wen set the lid back with a firm hand. "Lifting the lid lets the heat out. The buns need that trapped heat to puff and turn glossy. Pale buns are the result of an open lid, not a bad recipe."

For the second batch, Theo kept his hands on the counter. He watched the clock instead of the lid. When Uncle Wen lifted it at the right time, the buns were round and shiny.

Theo packed the pale buns into a bag marked family, not the case for customers. "I wanted to see them cooking," he said. "Seeing them cost the heat they needed. I can wait and still know what is happening."