Pennsylvania System of School Assessment English Language Arts Grade 5

Saturday at Central Market in Lancaster began while the tall windows were still gray. Nia stood at her uncle's cheese stall and read his pencil list aloud: coolers first, price sticks second, samples last. "If the cheese sits out while a cooler is open, it warms," Uncle Tomas said. Two aisles over, Mr. Chen set flower buckets on the stones. He had no list. The buckets were the whole shop.

Nia put the cheddar in the back cooler and the cup cheese in the front cooler. A short stick said Mild in front of the cup cheese. A tall stick said Sharp in front of the cheddar. She tasted a crumb of the sharp cheese, blinked, and set water cups by the sample plate. Mr. Chen's customers were already pointing at stems. Their hands were full before any bell.

Uncle Tomas nodded toward the flowers. "Cut stems can be seen early. Our curtain waits for the market bell, because cheese is not a bucket of daisies." When the bell rang at the Prince Street door, Nia opened the curtain. The first shopper asked for the cheese that makes people blink. Nia pointed to the tall stick. She and Mr. Chen had both been ready. They had not been ready in the same way.

Visitors who want the view from Mount Washington, high above the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh, can ride the incline or climb the public steps beside the track. The incline is a small roofed car pulled up a steep rail. The steps are open to the weather and have landings where people can rest.

A brochure written by a fifth-grade class in Duquesne lists the differences. The incline takes a few minutes and charges a fare, the money a rider pays to board. The steps take longer and cost nothing. On icy mornings the incline still runs, but a chain closes the steps. In summer both ways are open, and the steps smell like warm stone.

The brochure tells readers not to treat the choices as the same trip. Riders watch the river drop away through a window and do not feel the climb in their legs. Climbers can stop at a landing and look back. Both ways end at the same overlook. The time, the cost, and the weather rules are different.

On a rocky lookout at Hawk Mountain, above the Kittatinny Ridge, September counters watch broad-winged hawks flying south. A counter does not chase the birds. A counter calls numbers to a partner who writes them on a clipboard.

When air over the ridge heats, it rises in a column called a thermal. Hawks enter that rising air and circle upward without flapping. A group circling together is a kettle, named that because the birds turn in the sky the way bubbles turn in a pot. One bird gliding past the rocks and flapping as it goes is not a kettle. Counters mark that bird lone.

Maya, from Hamburg, showed her cousin the sheet from last Saturday. The kettle column said 40. The lone column said 3. "The forty rode one thermal together," she said. "The three came later, one by one, and they flapped. The same morning does not make them one group." Her cousin started to add 40 and 3 into a single box. Maya kept his pencil on the line between the columns. The sheet stayed kettle 40, lone 3.

Mushroom houses near Kennett Square, in Chester County, stay dark and damp on purpose. The crop does not grow in sunny fields. It grows in long sheds, on beds of compost. Compost here is a rich mix of straw and other plant material that has already started to break down.

Workers stack the compost and let it heat. They cool it before they add spawn, the living starter that will grow into mushrooms. White threads spread through the beds. When the threads have run, a worker covers them with casing, a layer of peat that holds moisture. Without casing, the threads dry, and few mushrooms form.

Harvest crews pick before dawn, while the sheds are still cool. They twist a ripe mushroom at the base so the bed stays whole for the next flush. A flush is the new set of mushrooms that comes after a picking. A torn bed can stop that flush. By the time grocery lights switch on in West Chester, the baskets are already on the truck.

I used to think a fair was one loud afternoon. In Centre County, my cousins stay all week in a canvas tent on the grange grounds. Mom zipped our flap on Monday and said the fair was a neighborhood that folds up on Sunday. I could hear a fiddle two rows over and smell vinegar fries through the screen.

On Thursday I tugged Ruth toward the midway. She held up two tickets and said, "Sheep barns at four, rides after supper." We stood by a pen while a judge talked. A boy about my age kept both hands on his lamb's neck so it would stand square. Ruth whispered that square meant the lamb's legs made a neat frame. It did not mean the lamb was mad.

After supper the midway lights hid the stars. I rode the swings once. My last ticket went to a milk-bottle game, and I did not knock a bottle down. Back in the tent, the fiddle had stopped. I wrote on a paper plate: barns before rides, and square means a neat stand. The fair was not one afternoon. It was a week of sleeping where the sheep could hear us.

The canal boat at New Hope sits in the Delaware Canal, a narrow water road in Bucks County that once carried coal and lumber. On our field trip, two mules walked the towpath, the trail beside the canal, and pulled the boat with a long rope. Mr. Shah told our class that the mules do the pulling and the captain does the steering.

Halfway to the lock, the rope went slack. The boat drifted and scraped the bank. A person on the path said the mules had quit. The captain shook his head. A branch had fallen across the rope and pinned it. He lifted the branch clear. The rope tightened, and the mules leaned into the harness again. They had not stopped working. The rope had been caught.

At the lock, the captain shut the lower gates and opened a sluice, a small gate that lets water in. The boat rose until it matched the higher level. Then the upper gates opened. I had thought a lock was only a fence across the canal. It worked like a water elevator. The mules waited on the towpath the whole time, tails switching, ready to pull us on.

The old blast furnaces in Bethlehem rise like rusty towers beside a concert lawn. People used to make steel in those towers. Now strings of bulbs hang between them, and folding chairs face a stage. Leo came with Aunt Rosa. He called the furnaces abandoned. Aunt Rosa said that unused for steel is not the same as empty.

Before the music, a guide walked Leo and Aunt Rosa along a railing. She pointed to a black hopper high on one furnace. A hopper, she said, is a funnel that once fed material into the heat. It pours nothing now. Swifts darted around it, and a spotlight turned the brick red. Leo stopped calling the place abandoned.

During the songs, Leo watched the towers more than the singers. At intermission he told Aunt Rosa, "The furnaces hold lights and birds and us." She answered, "They hold a new job." On the walk to the parking deck, Leo waved at the hopper as if it were a neighbor who had switched jobs.

A 4-H note from a garden in Berks County tells members to plant garlic in the fall, before the ground locks hard. A clove is one section broken from a whole bulb. Members plant cloves, not whole bulbs. The pointed end faces up. The flat end, where roots will grow, faces down.

Members mark the rows with string so nobody digs the cloves up by mistake in spring. Then they cover the rows with straw. The straw is a blanket, not a meal for the garlic. It keeps the soil from freezing and thawing so hard that the cloves heave. Heave means the cloves push themselves up out of the ground.

The plants are ready in July, not in April. A neck that softens and begins to brown is the signal to pull. Leaves that are still green mean wait. The note also says a bigger clove does not get a deeper hole. Every clove goes about two inches down. The depth stays the same. Only the month of the harvest changes.

Elk gather in the fields around Benezette, in Elk County, near dusk. Cows and calves feed in the open grass. Bulls, the males with antlers, bugle. A bugle is a high call that starts like a whistle and falls into a grunt. It carries farther than a calf's short bark.

Visitors are asked to stay by their cars along the road. A posted card says the field is the herd's feeding place, not a petting yard. Calves that take food from hands can lose their caution. The herd may then wander closer to the highway. Staying back keeps the elk in the grass and the people on the shoulder.

One September evening the herd fed for about twenty minutes. Then a truck door slammed, and the elk slipped into the tree line. The slam did not hurt an animal. It ended the viewing. A ranger told the row of cars that quiet watches last longer. The elk had not left for the winter. They had gone into the woods until the noise faded.

Dear Imani, Your roof in Philadelphia has six planters and a hose that reaches every one of them. Our garden in Scranton climbs a slope behind a row of houses. We do not have a hose. We have two rain barrels and a path of boards so our boots do not slide in the mud.

You wrote that your tomatoes ripened in one straight row. Ours ripen in pockets, little dips in the slope where the warmth stays. The top of the hill gets wind and dries fast, so we plant herbs there. The bottom stays wet after rain, so we plant squash there. Aunt Claire says the hill chooses the crops. On your roof, the hose lets you choose the spots.

I am not picking a winner. Your garden fits a roof with no ground under it. Our garden fits a slope that holds water in the wrong places. When you visit, use the board path. The barrels have no faucet, so we dip a watering can. I think your hose would be shocked. Love, Andre

The yellow trail in Philadelphia's Wissahickon woods drops toward a creek on wooden steps. After Thursday's storm, the lowest steps had slid sideways, and the hand rope lay in the water. Juniper and her father volunteer with the trail friends. They brought a pry bar, a coil of rope, and four new treads. A tread is the flat board that makes the top of a step.

Juniper wanted to nail the new treads on top of the crooked steps. Her father pulled the crooked steps out instead. "A new board on a loose frame will tilt in the next rain," he said. They dug the frame back into the bank, pinned it with stakes, and then screwed on the new treads. Juniper carried the old boards up to the road so they would not float downstream and jam the creek.

On Sunday a runner thanked them for the dry steps. The hand rope was tied to a new post. The creek was still brown, but it ran past the roots and did not tug the wood. Juniper wrote in the trail log: frame first, then treads. The repair started under the steps, not on top of them.

At an orchard in Adams County, west of Gettysburg, press day turns apples into cider in a fixed order. Helpers wash the apples in a trough. They cut away soft bruises. They do not peel the fruit. The skins go into the grinder with the flesh.

The grinder makes pulp, a wet chop that looks like coarse applesauce. Workers fold the pulp into cloths called cheeses. In this shed, a cheese is not a food made from milk. It is a cloth package of pulp. The packages are stacked, and the press squeezes them. Juice runs into a pan. The dry leftover is called pomace, and the orchard spreads that pomace back under the trees.

Helpers may pour a sample only after the juice is strained. Juice sitting in the pan is still cloudy with bits of pulp. Strained juice is what goes into the cup. A cup from last October was clear enough to show the red barn through the juice. Mrs. Patel keeps the order on a board over the press: wash, grind, press, strain, then the cup.

Before the Bristol parade stepped onto Mill Street, two drum lines rehearsed beside the library. The borough band wore wool coats and started when Captain Ruiz blew a whistle. The youth steppers wore bright sashes and started when Denise shouted. Theo, a clarinet player in the band, stood with Asha, who had joined that morning.

Asha heard Denise's shout and lifted her clarinet. Theo touched the whistle hanging from the captain's belt, not to blow it, but to show her. "That shout belongs to the steppers," he said. "Ours is the whistle. Louder does not mean we follow them." On the next try, the shout and the whistle came at the same moment. Asha waited for the whistle and came in with the band. Denise's line danced ahead on the shout. The two lines did not share a signal.

At the reviewing stand, the place where officials would sit, the lines played different tunes with a quiet gap between them. Theo told Asha the gap was written into the plan. The parade wanted two sounds, not one song stirred together. Asha copied a note onto her glove: whistle for the band, shout for the steppers.

The children's library in Harrisburg has a puppet loft above the picture-book bins. A loft is a small upper room reached by a ladder. The sign on the ladder says whispers only, because people are reading below. Down the hall, the meeting room is the place where a voice may get big and where clapping is allowed.

Ben scheduled one dragon play in each room on Wednesday. At three o'clock, in the loft, he whispered the whole story. The dragon's roar became a hiss near his sister's ear. She hid behind a cushion, and the readers at the tables did not look up. At half past three, in the meeting room, he used the full roar. She hid again. This time the family clapped once, and the sound stayed inside that room.

Afterward Ben hung the dragon on a hook in the loft and left the paper crown in the meeting room. He told his sister the puppet could travel, but the loudness could not. The loft kept the story small. The hall kept the noise. It was the same dragon and the same sister, in two rooms on purpose.

High on a dairy barn in Berks County, a round painted pattern sits between two small windows. Neighbors call it a hex sign. The painter, Ms. Lenz, tells visiting students that the name is old and that families do not all agree about what the old name promised. She does not guess for them. She asks each family which shapes they want and what those shapes should say this year.

The Stoudt family chose a ring of tulips around a star. Ms. Lenz said the tulips stand for the spring the family likes to welcome, because the family said so. The star stands for the eight people who live in the house, one point for each person, because Mr. Stoudt asked for that count. Another farm on the same road uses a star to mean a good harvest. The shape can match. The meaning does not have to match. It comes from the family, not from the paint by itself.

Some students want one answer key for every barn along the road. Ms. Lenz closes her sample book. "Look, then ask," she says. The pattern is easy to see from the road. The reason it was painted lives with the people who chose it.

A science class from Harrisburg meets on a gravel bar of the Susquehanna River when the water is low. The students measure two things: how clear the water looks, and how fast a leaf travels. Their teacher, Ms. Nguyen, says clear is not the same as safe, and fast is not the same as deep.

She lowers a painted disk on a string until the students cannot see the paint. That depth is the clearness reading. On Tuesday the disk disappeared at one foot. After a calm night, on Wednesday, it disappeared at three feet. The river had not become deeper. Mud had settled, so the water was clearer. A bigger clearness reading meant the students could see farther down, not that the river had grown.

For speed, the class sets two stakes ten feet apart and times a leaf. Tuesday's leaf took 8 seconds. On Wednesday, after water was released from a dam far upstream, the leaf took 4 seconds. The stakes had not moved. The current had quickened. The class wrote this note: the disk measures clearness, the leaf measures speed, and neither tool measures depth. Depth belongs to a marked pole, and they did not use the pole that week.

From the lookout above Horseshoe Curve, near Altoona, a railroad bends in a huge U around a valley. Freight trains slow down as they climb. They do not turn around and head back. They follow the curve so the climb stays gradual. Gradual means the rise is steady instead of steep.

Owen watched a train enter from the left. The engines disappeared into the bend, and he told his sister the trip was over. She handed him the plaque. It said the curve lets a train gain height without a steep hill. The engines showed up again on the right, higher than the cars that were still coming in on the left. Owen was seeing one train in two parts of the view because the track folds. A second train had not arrived.

A rail fan nearby said the front was already climbing out while the back was still arriving. Owen counted four engines at the front and no engines in the middle. He crossed out the words "trip over" in his notebook. He wrote, "Same train, bent track, front higher than the back." The curve was a ramp with the shape of a horseshoe.