Ohio's State Tests English Language Arts Grade 3

Four students from a Cleveland school spread out on a Lake Erie beach. Their names were June, Mateo, Priya, and Wes. They had come to tally shells. Wes glanced at the group and guessed the total would be 4. Priya answered before they started. "Four is how many students we are. We are counting shells, not ourselves."

June carried a clipboard and made one mark for each shell the group kept. Bottle caps stayed on the sand. A cracked shell still counted if the students could tell it had once been a shell. Smooth stones were left behind too.

When the last shell dropped into the pail, June read the marks aloud. "Our tally of shells is 15." Wes looked ready to say 4 again. Priya pointed at the column of marks. The shells were 15.

They poured the shells into a bin they had brought from school. Mateo set the clipboard on the lid. The marks matched the shells in the bin. Nobody added the students into the shell total.

In a science room in Dayton, Andre wrote a prediction on the board: the heavy ball would land first. Ms. Cho held two balls of the same size. One was a heavy rubber ball. The other was a light hollow ball. She stood on a step stool so both balls started at the same height above a folded towel.

Lila knelt beside the towel to watch the landing. "Some people think a heavier ball falls faster," Ms. Cho said. She opened both hands at the same time.

The heavier ball and the lighter ball landed together. Lila heard one thud, not two. The heavier ball did not arrive first.

Ms. Cho tapped Andre's sentence and asked him to cross it out. "Heavier objects do not fall faster. Both balls had the same distance to fall, so they took the same amount of time."

In a classroom in Columbus, Mr. Patel set a lamp on a cart and held a globe. "Seasons come from Earth's tilt," he said. "Tilt means the way Earth leans. That lean changes how directly sunlight hits Ohio."

Sora asked why January felt so cold. She thought Earth must be far from the Sun in winter. Mr. Patel turned the globe. "Earth is closest to the Sun in January. An Ohio January is still winter."

He tipped the globe into the January pose. Ohio leaned away from the Sun's direct rays. The light spread out, and the days were shorter. The cold came from that lean, not from Earth being far away.

Then he moved the globe to the July pose. Ohio got more direct light. Sora wrote one line on a card: closest in January, and winter in Ohio all the same.

At a night program in Akron, the class pressed close to a tall window. A crescent hung above the parking lot. Nia held up a card she had written: "Earth's shadow makes the crescent."

Mr. Ellison turned the card over. On the blank side he sketched a ball with one bright half. "A crescent is the lit half, turned so we see only a slice," he said. "The dark part is night on the Moon. Earth's shadow is not covering it."

He tapped the sketch. "Earth's shadow on the Moon is a lunar eclipse, and that is rare. Most nights the Moon is not passing through Earth's shadow."

Nia erased her first sentence. The glowing edge was sunlight on the Moon. She wrote the new sentence under the sketch and slid the card into her folder.

On a cold morning near Chardon, in Geauga County, Devon stood in a maple grove with Mr. Hale. Clear sap dripped from a metal spout into a covered pail. Devon tasted a drop from the spout. It was barely sweet and mostly water.

Inside the sugarhouse, a long pan bubbled. "Sap becomes syrup by boiling water out," Mr. Hale said. "We do not pour sugar in. Steam carries the water away, and the sugar that was already in the sap stays in the pan."

A chart by the door said about 40 gallons of sap make 1 gallon of syrup. Mr. Hale pointed at a row of full pails. "That is why one small jug takes so many trips from the trees."

By afternoon the pan held a darker, thicker syrup. Devon helped fill a jug for the school breakfast. The syrup tasted like maple. The watery drop from the spout had not.

Keisha and Jonah followed a ranger down stone steps into a gorge in Hocking Hills. They heard the waterfall before they saw it. The air felt cooler than the parking lot above.

Orange tape crossed a log that had once been a shortcut. The ranger stopped with both hands up. "That log is closed. The bark is slick. We stay on the steps."

At a yellow post the trail looped back toward the hill. The ranger said the gorge stays shady, so ice can last there in spring after the hilltop has melted. The hikers did not pass the post.

On the way up, they ate apple slices at a wooden rail, not on the steps. Jonah reached toward the tape. Keisha shook her head. The tape was a warning, and the ranger had already told them the reason.

Luis and Aunt Carmen stood behind a rail in a park along the Ohio River in Cincinnati. A long flat boat sat low in the water. A smaller boat pressed against its back.

Aunt Carmen said the flat boat was a barge carrying coal. The smaller boat was a tug, and the tug pushed the barge. Horses were not pulling it. A horn sounded. She said the horn meant the barge was turning.

Luis pointed at a gray bird on a rock. "Is that the boat's name?" Aunt Carmen smiled. "The bird is a heron. The boat's name is painted on the tug: Cedar Tow."

A sign on the rail said to stay behind it. Luis kept his toes on his side of the line. They counted three barges before the first one slid out of sight. The rail was for watching, not for climbing.

Amira's class visited a small museum beside a park path in Akron. A guide poured water from a pitcher into a model lock. The water lifted a toy boat. "A lock raises a boat by filling with water," the guide said. "This pan is a model, not a swimming pool."

Outside, the old canal was gone. The path where mules once walked was now for people and bicycles. A picture on a post showed two mules towing a boat. Those mules were not on the path that day.

The guide said bicycles stay to the right. Amira had thought the path was only for mules. She stepped right when a rider rang a small bell.

They returned to the model. The guide filled it again from the low gate, and the toy boat rose a second time. Amira wrote: the picture is the past, and the path today is for walkers and bikes.

At a windy field in Dayton, a guide stood with Hector's class behind a rope. A small airplane model rested on the grass. Its body was wood, and its wings were cloth. The guide said early flights near this city were short hops, not trips to another town.

Hector asked if the model would take off after lunch. The guide shook her head. "This model stays on the ground. It is here so you can look. The hops happened long ago."

A striped wind sock pointed toward a hangar. The guide said the sock shows where the wind is going. Hector bent his knees, ready to duck under the rope for a closer look at the cloth wing. The guide asked him to stay behind the rope.

He drew the wing in a notebook instead. The drawing could leave with him. The model had to stay on the field.

Elena and her cousin Raul walked a mowed path at the earthworks in Chillicothe. A wide circle of packed earth rose beside the grass. A guide said people built the walls long ago, basket by basket. A tractor had not pushed the dirt up last spring.

A sign at the gate showed the circle on a map. The guide asked the class not to climb the wall. Feet on the slope would scrape the shape people had made.

A hawk circled overhead. Raul whispered that the hawk must have stacked the baskets. Elena looked at the sign again. The hawk was a bird in the sky. People had built the walls.

They finished the loop on the mowed path. Raul kept his shoes in the grass. Elena matched her steps to the map so she would not cut across the wall.

In a hot studio in Toledo, Samira stood behind a yellow line on the floor. A worker lifted a glowing blob on the end of a metal pipe. The blob was glass. It looked red because it was hot.

Samira asked if the red was paint. The worker kept both gloved hands on the pipe. "The glow is heat. When this glass cools, it will look clear, not painted."

He rolled the blob on a wet pad, then shaped it into a small dish. Visitors were not to touch the pipe or the dish. The yellow line marked the safe side of the room.

The dish went onto a high shelf to cool. Samira drew a red circle in her notebook and labeled it heat, not paint. The worker's gloves stayed on until the pipe was back in its rack.

On a bluff above Lake Erie in Cleveland, Owen's class came to record the weather. A flagpole stood by the path to a pier. The flag that morning was red. Ms. Brooks read the board aloud. Green means a calm beach walk is allowed. Red means stay off the pier.

Owen remembered a green flag from last week. He started toward the pier with his pencil. Ms. Brooks called him back to the grass. "Today's flag is the one that counts."

A ribbon tied to Owen's clipboard flew out sideways. Ms. Brooks said a sideways ribbon meant the wind was strong. Owen wrote two notes on the chart: red flag, and strong wind.

The pier stayed empty. The class filled the worksheet boxes from the grass. Owen put his pencil down and did not ask about the pier again.

On a wet rock shelf at Put-in-Bay, Patrick and Noor stood with a ranger. Long smooth grooves ran through the stone. The ranger said ice carved those grooves long ago. A plow had not cut them this spring.

Nearby, a jagged crack split one corner of the shelf. The ranger touched the smooth groove, then the crack. "The smooth one is the old ice mark. The jagged crack came from a freeze much later."

The class wore closed-toe shoes because the rock was wet. Noor slipped, and Patrick caught her elbow. The ranger pointed to a metal rail. They held that rail for the rest of the stop.

Noor sketched only the smooth groove. She left the jagged crack out of the drawing so she would remember which mark was old.

Cole's class stopped beside a brick warehouse in Marietta, near the Ohio River. A brown line was painted above the second window. The teacher said the line showed how high the river rose in an old flood. The line was a record. It was not the water that day.

Cole looked from the line to the river and pulled his jacket closed. He thought the town was flooding because the mark was so high. The teacher walked him to the dock steps. The day's water touched only the bottom step.

They drew the wall in their notebooks. Cole used brown for the old flood line and blue for the water on the bottom step. Six dry steps sat between the blue water and the brown line.

He closed the notebook. The town was not flooding. The high mark was a memory of a past flood, and his shoes were on dry brick.

Willa's bus stopped at a covered bridge on a creek west of Columbus. The bridge had a roof and wooden sides. The driver said the roof keeps the wooden floor dry. It was not built to make a dark tunnel for games.

A sign said one vehicle at a time. A red truck was already inside, so the bus waited on the road. Willa counted the thumps of the truck's tires until it rolled out into the sun.

Before the bus entered, the driver counted the students and got 22. After they crossed, the driver counted again and got 22. Willa understood that 22 was the class, not the boards in the floor.

Inside, their footsteps echoed. The driver had asked for quiet voices so the count would be easy to hear. Willa watched the creek through a gap in the side boards and kept her voice down.

In a classroom in Cincinnati, Hana planted a bean seed in a clear cup. She pressed the seed against the side so the class could see it. Dark soil filled the cup, and a bright window stood behind the sill.

A week later the seed coat had split. White roots pointed down into the soil. A green shoot pointed up toward the window. Hana had thought the whole plant would grow down because she had buried the seed.

Her teacher said roots grow down and the shoot grows up. Sunlight from the window helps the shoot. The dark soil is the place for the roots. Hana drew arrows on a paper label: down for roots, up for shoot.

She watered until the soil was damp, not flooded. One other cup had been soaked. The teacher set that soaked cup aside to drain before it went back to the sill. Hana left her own cup in the light.

Jules unfolded a paper map of Ohio on a table in Columbus. Lake Erie was a blue band across the top. The Ohio River was a blue line along the bottom edge. A black star sat on Columbus.

Jules said north must be uphill because it was at the top of the page. Mr. Adeyemi tapped the legend. "On this map, north is the top of the page. It is not a hill you would climb."

The legend said a blue line is water and a black star is the capital. Jules circled the star with a finger in the air. The star meant Columbus, the capital. It did not mean a planet in the sky.

A note in the corner said one inch stands for about 50 miles. Jules started to pace around the chairs. Mr. Adeyemi shook his head. The inches were for the map, not for a walk around the table. Jules traced the Ohio River with a finger and left the chairs where they were.