Ohio's State Tests English Language Arts Grade 5

The card on the pea fence at the Wooster school garden gives two counts. Sprouts appear on day 9. The peas are ready 40 days after sprouting, not 40 days after planting. Day 9 plus 40 days is day 49, and that day is the harvest.

Priya planted on a cool Monday and called that morning day 0. She circled day 40 on her chart. On day 9 the first sprouts opened along the fence. Ms. Okonkwo moved the harvest clip from day 40 to day 49. "Start the 40 days when the sprouts appear," she said.

On day 40 the pods were still short and pale, so the class left them on the vines. On day 49 the pods were fat and green, and the class picked them into one basket. The 40 on the card had measured the days after sprouting.

The ferry board at Marblehead lists the boats to Kelleys Island on Lake Erie. The last boat leaves at 5:45. A long line of cars does not print a later time. A short line does not erase a time that is already listed. Each boat holds four cars.

Nora reached the lane at 5:41 with three cars ahead of her, so she was fourth. The driver behind her was fifth. That driver said the crew would add a 6:20 boat because the lane looked full. Ms. Calder tapped the board. "5:45 is the last time printed. The line shows who fits on this boat. It does not add a new time."

Nora's car rolled on at 5:44. The lane closed at 5:45, and the fifth driver stayed on shore. Earlier that afternoon, at 3:10, only one car had been waiting, and the boat left anyway because 3:10 was printed. The board chose both departures.

In a quilt shop in Millersburg, a brown stitch through the lower corner means the quilt is promised to the county fair booth and is not for sale. A purple tag means the quilt is for sale at the price written on the tag. The stitch and the tag do different jobs.

Tessa nearly handed a brown-stitched quilt to a visitor who offered thirty dollars. That quilt had no purple tag. Aunt Golda folded it into the fair trunk. "The brown stitch is the promise," she said. "An offer does not cover it."

The visitor then bought a different quilt. Its purple tag read eighteen dollars, and its corner had no brown stitch. That night Tessa traced the brown stitch with her finger. The thread was the shop's way of saying the quilt would hang in the fair booth.

Maren wrote to her cousin Evan from Kelleys Island, in Lake Erie. She had spent the morning at the glacial grooves. At first she thought the long cuts in the rock were wagon ruts. A sign by the fence says ice carved them. A glacier dragged stones across the limestone long ago.

The same sign tells visitors to look from the walkway and not to step inside the fence. Maren had one boot on the rail when a ranger pointed to that last line. She put the boot back on the walkway. In her notebook she crossed out "wagon ruts" and wrote "ice and stones." The grooves did not change. Her label did.

The smooth gray floor of the cut looked like a place to walk. Maren told Evan that the fence was the rule, not the look of the stone. She asked him to visit in July, bring a hat, and leave the climb for stories. She would be on the island until Friday.

At a glass studio near the Toledo docks, a finished paperweight must stay in the annealer for 6 hours. That oven cools the glass slowly. A weight can feel cool at the door after 1 hour and still crack if it comes out early.

Cam pressed a hand to the annealer door when the timer showed 1 hour. He wanted the weight before his bus. Ms. Vogel shook her head. "Your hand feels the door. The timer follows the glass. The card says 6 hours."

The next afternoon, Cam's weight had finished the 6 hours, and it came out whole. A bead from another bench had left the annealer at 1 hour. That bead had a bright crack. The two pieces had been in the same room at the 1-hour mark. Only one had followed the card.

Beside Lock 2 in Peninsula, a sign explains the red bar over the old canal. A lowered red bar means the lock is filling, and boats below must wait. A raised red bar means the gate may open and a boat may enter. The sign says a lowered bar does not mean a boat has run aground.

Mateo saw a canal boat sitting still under a lowered red bar. He wrote, "The boat is stuck on the mud." His uncle asked him to read the sign again. A filling lock is an ordinary wait. The boat sat level, and nobody on deck waved for help.

The bar rose. The gate opened, and the boat moved in. Mateo crossed out his first sentence. He wrote, "Lowered meant wait. Raised meant enter." The boat had been held by a filling lock.

On a class hike in Hocking Hills, above Old Man's Cave, the trail card used a double yellow blaze for a closed spur and a single white blaze for the open path. The yellow spur dropped toward the gorge. The white path curved along the rim. A line under the card said that boot prints do not repaint a blaze.

Hector wanted the straight spur because it looked shorter. He showed his partner a line of boot prints on that spur. Ms. Dalton asked him to read the card again. The prints sat under the double yellow blaze. "Shorter is not open," she said. "The white blaze is the path we were given."

The class followed the white blaze along the rim. That path added 15 minutes. They still reached the parking lot 8 minutes before the bus. Hector copied the card into his notebook: double yellow means closed, and single white means open. He left the boot prints out of the note.

At the railroad crossing in Bellevue, a bell and a lamp work together. A ringing bell with a red lamp means a train is coming, and bikes stop behind the white line even if the rails look empty. A silent bell with a green lamp means bikes may cross. The look of the rails is not the signal.

Yara saw empty rails and rolled forward while the bell rang and the lamp stayed red. Coach Ibarra held her handlebar. "Empty rails do not turn a red lamp green," he said.

A freight train passed. The bell stopped, and the lamp turned green. Yara walked her bike across. On the way back, the rails were empty again, the bell was silent, and the lamp was green, so the group crossed at once. Yara wrote on her route card: red and ringing means stop; green and silent means go. Empty described the rails both times.

The tool wall at a Dayton library lends tools with a name tag. A tag keeps a tool for the person named on it until Saturday at closing. After closing, the tool returns to the open wall. A tool with no tag may be borrowed at once. A tagged tool is not free for every member while the tag is still in date.

On Thursday, Luis found a drill with a tag that read Maya Chen and "hold through Saturday closing." He asked to borrow it. Mr. Adeyemi said no. "The tag is a promise with a clock. Thursday is inside the promise." A hammer beside the drill had no tag, and Mr. Adeyemi said Luis could borrow that hammer the same afternoon.

On Monday morning the tag was gone, and the drill hung on the open wall. Luis borrowed it with his own card. The drill had not changed. The day had.

On the door of a sugarhouse near Chardon, a scale rule is printed in pencil. Sap goes into the evaporator only when the little scale reads 2 or higher. Sap that reads 1 is poured out, even if that bucket is the heaviest. The fire starts only when 20 kept buckets are ready.

Eli carried in the heaviest bucket of the morning. Its scale read 1. He wanted to keep it because his boots were wet and the path back to the trees was long. Grandma Petrov poured that sap under a maple. She kept a lighter bucket that read 3. "Heavy is not the test," she said. "The scale is the test."

By noon they had 14 buckets that read 2 or higher. Grandma Petrov left the fire unlit. The next morning six more buckets passed the scale. She added them to the 14. Twenty kept buckets sat by the pan, and then she lit the fire. The heavy bucket from the first morning never entered the evaporator.

The seed drawer at the Oberlin library carries one card. A borrower may take one packet. To finish, the borrower brings back a packet of seeds saved from the plants, or writes a note about what grew. The word "or" makes the note a full finish. The card does not say the note must be long.

Jonah took bean seeds in April. In September the vines had failed, and he had no seeds to save. He wrote four sentences about the dry weeks and put the note in the drawer. A neighbor said a note was not a real return. The librarian tapped the word "or." "The card accepts a note when you have no packet to bring back."

Jonah's name stayed on the finished list. The neighbor returned a packet of sunflower seeds and wrote no note. Both names were finished. They had used different parts of the same card.

The tuning card in the Springfield school choir room says the choir waits 12 minutes after the radiator is turned down. Warm air makes the pitch drift. Those minutes let the room cool so the notes can match. The starting bell is not the signal to tune.

Wes wanted to tune when the bell rang, because rehearsal had started. The radiator had just been turned down, and the room was still warm. Ms. Ellison shook her head. They sang one test chord anyway. The high note and the low note did not match.

They waited the 12 minutes. The window glass felt cooler. They sang the same chord, and the notes matched. Ms. Ellison added a line to the card: "The bell starts rehearsal. The cool room starts the tuning."

On a pawpaw walk along the Hocking River near Athens, the guide gave one test. A fruit is ready when it feels soft and smells sweet. A hard fruit stays on the branch, even if the skin is yellow. Some ready fruits stay pale. Color by itself is not the test.

Juniper pulled a yellow fruit that felt like a stone. The guide set it back on the branch. On the next tree, a pale fruit gave under her thumb and smelled like banana. That fruit went into the basket.

Juniper drew two columns in her notebook: Keep and Leave. Soft and sweet went under Keep. Yellow and hard went under Leave. She did not make a column for color by itself.

The book bike from the Akron library visits three parks in a fixed order. Tuesday is Firestone. Wednesday is Cascade Valley. Thursday is Goodyear Heights. If rain falls on a visit day, the bike stays in the garage. That park's visit moves to the same weekday of the next week. The bike does not skip ahead to the next park on the list.

On a rainy Wednesday, Deon went to Cascade Valley and found no bike. He rode to Goodyear Heights and found no bike there either. Ms. Shah showed him the rain line. "Wednesday's rain holds Cascade Valley for next Wednesday. Thursday is still Thursday."

The next Wednesday was dry. The bike stood at Cascade Valley with a crate of books. The Thursday between those two Wednesdays was also dry, and the bike had been at Goodyear Heights that day. Deon checked out a book about bridges and copied the rain line onto his bookmark.

The Y-bridge in Zanesville meets in the middle of the Muskingum River, so a driver can leave on more than one ramp. A sign at the center says the left ramp goes to Linden Avenue, the right ramp goes to Main Street, and the road behind the sign returns to the west bank.

A delivery driver asked Sable for Main Street. She pointed to the right ramp. He nosed the truck toward the left ramp because that ramp looked wider. Sable read the sign aloud. He turned onto the right ramp.

Sable's uncle laughed as they walked the road behind the sign, back to the west bank. "From the middle, every ramp looks possible," he said. Sable tapped the paper copy of the sign in her pocket. "Possible is not the same as labeled."

The boardwalk at Cedar Bog, near Urbana, is the only place visitors may walk. A sign says the ground can look firm and still be a wet mat. Deer paths leave the boards. Those paths are not a second trail for people.

Noah saw a deer path and a green plant just beyond it. He wanted to step off and count that plant. Dr. Singh kept the group on the boards. "The path belongs to the deer. The boards belong to us. We count only the plants we can see clearly from here."

From the left rail they counted 12 pitcher plants. From the right rail they counted 7. Noah did not add the far plant, because its leaves were hidden. He wrote, "12 plus 7 is 19. The hidden plant is not in the sum."

The covered bridge at Harpersfield carries one lane over the Grand River. A sign at the east end says the car closest to the bridge goes first. A longer line does not go first. Flashing headlights do not change the sign.

Two cars waited on the east side, and four cars waited on the west. Pilar's front bumper was at the bridge mouth, so her car was closest. The first west car still sat back at the curve. A driver in the west line flashed his lights. The car behind Pilar told her to wait because the other line was longer. Her father read the sign. "We are closest. Length is not the rule."

Pilar's car crossed. The four west cars waited. When she reached the far bank, the first west car entered. On the ride home she said, "Four is more than two, and our side still went first because our car was closest."