Ohio's State Tests English Language Arts Grade 4

Before art at Brick School in Canton, Mr. Okonkwo handed Priya a clipboard and asked her to tally the paint pans in the blue cart. A tally is a set of marks used for counting. Priya touched each paint pan once and made one mark for that pan. She drew three groups of five marks and then two marks by themselves. She counted five, ten, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Above the marks she wrote the words Paint pans. The tally was 17 paint pans.

The whiteboard had a different job. Under the heading Students, Mr. Okonkwo had listed every name in the class and written 21 at the bottom. He told the class that 21 students would paint that afternoon. The number 21 counted students. It did not count pans, brushes, or tables.

Eli tapped the clipboard and said the tally had to be wrong. He wanted it to say 21, because 21 students were in the room. Priya tapped her heading. The marks stood for paint pans. She had not made a mark for any student.

They set the pans on the tables. Six students sat in two groups of three, and each of those groups shared one pan, so those six students used two pans. The other fifteen students each used one pan. Fifteen pans plus two pans made 17 paint pans. Six students plus fifteen students made 21 students. Everyone painted.

At cleanup, the clipboard still showed a tally of 17 paint pans. The whiteboard still showed 21 under Students. Eli erased nothing. Both numbers could be right because they counted different things.

Fourth grade at Hill Street School in Cincinnati performs this play in the classroom. A cardboard sign on the desk reads: Pencils are 2 tokens each. An eraser costs 1 token. Sam holds a tin with 5 tokens. Rosa stands behind the desk. Mr. Adel sits with a pencil behind his ear.

SAM: Please hand me two pencils and one eraser. This tin has 5 tokens in it.

ROSA: Two pencils together cost 2 tokens. You can keep the rest of the tin.

SAM: The sign says each, so the price belongs to every pencil. The first pencil is 2 tokens and the second pencil is another 2. That is 4 tokens for the pencils. The eraser costs 1 token. Four plus one is 5 tokens.

Rosa looks at the sign a second time. She takes all 5 tokens from the tin and gives Sam two pencils and one eraser.

MR. ADEL: The word each puts a price of 2 tokens on every pencil by itself. A whole pile of pencils does not share one price of 2 tokens.

A fourth grader at Bay School in Marblehead wrote this poem after a class walk on the lighthouse pier along Lake Erie.

Pale fog sits on the pier like wool pulled over a lamp. The limestone tower goes pale, then paler, until the fog keeps the top. A chain hangs across the door, so I stay on the ground.

A gull walks the rail and scolds the water. I scold no one. I count twelve steps back toward the bus so I will not lose the turn.

Lake Erie slaps the stones under my shoes. I pick up one dry, flat stone and drop it into my coat pocket. The stone is cold. It can stay cold until Monday at my desk.

Wind pulls the fog off the lamp in one long sheet. The lamp turns, and I turn with it once, then I plant my feet. A short horn sounds from the bus. I answer by walking.

The courtyard at Mound Street School in Columbus has a short tree that Ohio claims as its state tree, the Ohio buckeye. In autumn the prickly husks split. Brown seeds drop onto the bricks. Each seed has a pale round spot.

A courtyard card tells how the seed got its name. People thought the pale spot looked like the eye of a buck, a male deer. The leaf is another clue. The leaflets usually spread from one point, five leaflets on a typical leaf, like a hand with the fingers held apart.

The same card says a buckeye seed is not food. Eating one can make a person sick. Seeds may stay on the bricks or go to the nature table for study. They are not snacks. Imani had a smooth seed halfway to her lunch bag. She read the card, stopped, and set the seed on the nature table.

A squirrel carried another seed to the fence and buried it. The card's rule is for people. It does not try to describe squirrels. Students in that courtyard still do not eat buckeye seeds, even when a husk has split and the seed looks polished.

North Hill School in Akron sent fourth grade to the Towpath Trail in Cuyahoga Valley. The trail follows the old canal. A numbered post marked mile 12 where the class stepped onto the gravel.

A footbridge left the towpath and crossed the river. Orange tape hung from the rail. A sign said the bridge was closed because three floor boards were missing. Deon pointed across the tape and called the bridge a shortcut to Brandywine Falls. He wanted to step over the tape and save time.

Ms. Shah stopped him before his shoe touched a loose board. She said Brandywine Falls was on a different trail, so this bridge was not a shortcut to the falls. The missing boards made the bridge unsafe. Their detour was the towpath itself. A detour, she told them, is the other way you walk when the first way is closed.

They stayed on the gravel. They passed the post for mile 13 and stopped at the post for mile 14, beside a restored canal lock. Ms. Shah said the posts showed a walk of two miles. Deon looked back. The closed bridge was still empty. No one from the class had crossed it. The lock, not the falls, was the sight at the end of their walk.

Dear Mateo, Yesterday our class visited Mound City, beside the Scioto River in Chillicothe. Low walls and mounds of earth sit in the grass. Native people built those earthworks more than a thousand years ago. I had pictured tall stacks of cut stone. What I saw was shaped soil, wide and green.

A sign at the entrance told visitors to stay off the earth walls. I kept my shoes on the mowed path. Our guide held a map that showed the site beside the river, in Chillicothe. I copied one circular path onto a blank page so I could remember the shape.

At lunch I found a maple leaf on the picnic grass, away from the mounds. The sign also said not to take anything from the earthworks, so I left every stick that lay on a mound. The picnic leaf was outside that rule. I am pressing it in this envelope for you.

I want you to know what the place felt like, and I want you to know the rule before you visit with Aunt Alma. Your cousin, Lucia

Miller Street School in Newark took a bus to a small orchard just outside town. Mr. Pell met the class by two baskets and a hand pump. A board on the table listed the work in order. First, wash hands at the pump. Second, take a whole apple from the green basket only if the skin has no soft brown spot. Third, give any bruised apple to Mr. Pell for the red basket. Fourth, stand back while Mr. Pell uses the knife. Students do not slice. Fifth, put the slices he gives you into a paper cup.

The green basket held apples the orchard could sell whole. The red basket held bruised apples that would go to the press for cider. A bruise was a soft brown spot, even if the rest of the apple looked red and large.

Asha found a large apple with a soft brown spot and dropped it into the green basket. Mr. Pell took it out and set it in the red basket. He told her that size did not decide the basket. The spot did.

Then the class washed their hands, chose unbruised apples, and waited. Mr. Pell sliced. The students filled paper cups. The knife stayed in his hand the whole time. At the end, the red basket went to the press, and the green basket stayed for customers who wanted whole apples.

Fog covered the harbor at Catawba Point, on the Lake Erie shore. Fourth grade from Port Clinton waited for a boat called Lake Gull. A chalkboard on the dock first said that Lake Gull would leave at 11:00 for Put-in-Bay, on South Bass Island.

The clerk, Ms. Ruiz, drew a line through 11:00. Under it she wrote 11:40. She told the families that fog had delayed the trip. The new time was the one to follow. The crossed-out time was the old plan.

Caleb and his uncle arrived at 11:10. Caleb saw the crossed-out 11:00, decided the boat had already gone, and turned back toward the parking lot. His uncle pointed at the chalk under the line. Lake Gull was still tied to the dock. The hull knocked softly against the bumpers.

They waited with the class. At 11:40 the clerk opened the chain, and the passengers walked onto Lake Gull. The boat pulled away from Catawba Point and headed toward Put-in-Bay. Caleb said he had almost obeyed a time that had been erased. The time written underneath was the one that got him on board.

Ellis, a fourth grader at Hocking School in Logan, kept these notes on a three-day trip to Old Man's Cave.

Tuesday: The creek was low and clear. I could see stones on the bottom. Our group walked the gorge trail to the cave. Water fell from the rim in a thin sheet, and the trail was open.

Wednesday: Rain had fallen all night. The creek was high and brown, and it covered the stones I had seen on Tuesday. A ranger closed the gorge trail. We stayed at the visitor center, dried our sleeves, and copied the trail map into our notebooks. We did not enter the gorge.

Thursday: The creek was lower than on Wednesday, but the water was still muddy. The gorge trail stayed closed. We took the rim trail instead and looked down at the cave. The opening was a dark mouth with spray in front of it. We saw the cave from above. We still did not walk into the gorge.

Jordan, a fourth grader at Glen Street School in Yellow Springs, wrote this piece for the school paper.

The courtyard garden should stay for another year. Bees use the flowers when the rest of the blacktop is bare. Our class cuts chives from the near bed and takes them to the salad bar on Fridays. Those are two uses a paved corner cannot give us.

When the vegetables are finished, we plant winter rye. A cover crop is a plant grown to cover and hold the soil after the food plants are done. The rye keeps the dirt from washing toward the drain when the snow melts.

Some students say the garden should go because mud rides in on our shoes and streaks the hallway. That complaint is fair on rainy days. A boot tray by the garden door would answer it. We can leave the muddy shoes on the tray and walk the hall in dry shoes.

I am asking the principal to keep the garden and to put the tray in place before the next rainy week. The flowers, the chives, and the rye are already doing their work.

The science table at Beall Avenue School in Wooster held three cups of hot cider and a thermometer. Ms. Patel said the class would not drink those three cups. A separate thermos was for tasting later. The test cups were for measuring heat.

She filled a foam cup, a paper cup, and a metal cup. Each cup started at 140 degrees. The class waited 20 minutes and measured again. The foam cup was at 120 degrees, a drop of 20. The paper cup was at 100 degrees, a drop of 40. The metal cup was at 85 degrees, a drop of 55.

Chris had guessed that the metal cup would stay the hottest. He said a metal pan on a stove heats up fast, so metal should keep cider hot. The thermometer did not support that guess. After 20 minutes the metal cup was the coolest of the three.

Ms. Patel wrote the three ending temperatures on the board and circled 120. The foam cup had changed the least, so in this test the foam cup kept the cider warmest. The metal cup had changed the most.

This story takes place in 1851 along the Maumee River at Providence. Hattie's Uncle Ned worked a lock on the Miami and Erie Canal. A canal boat sat in the chamber at the low water level. Two mules stood on the towpath, waiting. They would pull the boat only after the upper gate opened.

Wind knocked Uncle Ned's hat into the water beside the boat. Hattie reached for the ladder on the lock wall. Uncle Ned stopped her. He told her that nobody climbs into the chamber. The stone was slick, and the water was about to rise.

He shut the gates and opened a paddle. A paddle is a small gate that lets water into the lock. The water rose, and the boat rose with it. The hat floated up beside the boat. At the top, Uncle Ned lifted the hat out with a boat hook. Hattie's feet stayed on the walkway.

When the upper gate opened, the mules pulled the boat out of the lock and along the towpath. Uncle Ned shook the hat and put it on. The ladder had not been used.

During a picnic at Edgewater Park in Cleveland, Mr. Lang's class from Pier School in Lakewood found a sketchbook on a bench. The inside cover said Jonah Hale, Room 14, Lakeview School. A drawing of a tall clock filled one page, and the words West Side Market were written under the drawing in Jonah's handwriting.

A note on the next page said Jonah would meet his dad by the West Side Market clock at 3. The note had today's date. The sketchbook was not marked with Pier School, and no one in Mr. Lang's class was named Jonah.

One student wanted to leave the book on the bench so Jonah might come back for it. Mr. Lang said the note named a meeting place, and that place was the market clock, not the park bench. Edgewater Park was not that clock. On the way to the bus, the class stopped at the West Side Market office and handed the sketchbook to the clerk.

The clerk said Jonah had asked for a lost sketchbook an hour earlier and was coming back at 3, the time on the note. The book stayed at the office. The bench at Edgewater no longer held it.

Noor, a fourth grader in Lima, wrote this report after seeing two of Ohio's borders.

Lake Erie lies along much of Ohio's northern edge. Cleveland and Toledo both sit on that lake. On a calm morning at a beach near Toledo, Noor watched a stick bob beside the sand. The wind pushed the stick sideways. It did not ride one channel the way a river stick does. South Bass Island, where Put-in-Bay is, sits out in the lake and is reached by boat.

The Ohio River runs along Ohio's southern edge. Cincinnati and Marietta sit on that river. At Marietta, Noor saw a stick in the current move downstream. A current is water moving in a direction. That stick was carried toward the west, the way the Ohio River flows as it travels toward Cincinnati and, much later, the Mississippi.

Noor's point was direct. Ohio has water on its north border and water on its south border, but the lake and the river did not act the same. One stick drifted with the wind at the lake beach. The other stick was carried downstream by the river current.

Crane Creek moves through Magee Marsh, near Oak Harbor, on the Lake Erie side of Ottawa County. A class from Oak Harbor pushed kayaks into a calm side channel. The card of rules said to keep voices soft and to keep paddles from slapping the water if they wanted birds to stay.

A great blue heron stood in the shallows. Theo laughed and brought his paddle down flat. The slap was loud. The heron lifted and flew to a far bend, out of clear sight.

Lina laid her paddle across the kayak and let the boat drift. She did not shout. After several quiet minutes the heron stepped into the shallow water near her bow and caught a small silver fish. The fish flashed once and was gone.

Before that catch, Theo had told Lina that the heron was gone for the rest of the day. The fish beside her bow showed a narrower fact. The bird had left the place where the paddle slapped. It was still in the marsh, hunting where the channel stayed quiet.

Plains School in Athens keeps a rain gauge in the garden, a clear tube with inch marks, nailed to a post away from the roof. Keisha reads it each school day and dumps the tube after she writes the number, so the next day starts empty.

This week's page in the class book showed Monday 0.0 inches, Tuesday 0.4 inches, Wednesday 1.2 inches, Thursday 0.0 inches, and Friday 0.2 inches. Wednesday's 1.2 was the largest number on the page. Friday's 0.2 was real rain, but it was less than Tuesday's 0.4.

A poster in the hall said rain had fallen on every school day this week. Keisha checked the book. Monday and Thursday were both 0.0, so those two days were dry. Rain had been recorded on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, which is three days, not five.

She added the rainy amounts, 0.4 plus 1.2 plus 0.2. The sum was 1.8 inches for the week. She wrote 1.8 at the bottom of the column. Then she added a line under the hall poster: the gauge had not collected rain on every school day.

Ms. Ellison gave fourth grade at Second Street School a one-page walk for a morning in Marietta. The page said the walk was four blocks and would not include the museum.

Start at the blue school door on Second Street. Walk toward the Ohio River until you reach Front Street. If you come to the bridge that crosses to Williamstown, do not cross it. That bridge leaves Ohio.

At Front Street, turn left. Follow the sidewalk until you see a large sycamore. Stop at the stone flood marker beside that tree. The marker shows how high the water rose in a flood long ago. Do not continue to the museum door, even if you can see the sign from the tree.

The page ended with a word and its meaning. Nearby, the Muskingum River meets the Ohio River. That meeting of two rivers is a confluence. The class was to read the marker, name the confluence, and walk back. Four blocks to the marker, and no bridge in the plan.