Virginia Standards of Learning English Language Arts Grade 4

A canal boat sat inside a stone lock in Richmond, a chamber with wooden gates at both ends. Amira leaned on the rail and searched the walls for a crane. "Something has to lift us," she told her uncle. "The upper canal is higher than this one."

Uncle Deshawn shook his head. "Watch the water, not the sky." The lock keeper, Ms. Pruitt, closed the lower gates behind the boat. Then she opened a small valve from the upper level. Water poured into the chamber through an opening under the wall.

The boat did not jump. It rose slowly as the chamber filled. Amira's stomach gave a little dip, the way it did in an elevator. She kept her hand on the rail until the water inside stood even with the water beyond the upper gates.

"Now the gates can open without a rush," Ms. Pruitt said. "If I opened them while the chamber was still low, the upper canal would spill through like a broken dam." She swung the upper gates, and Uncle Deshawn steered the boat forward.

Amira looked back at the empty chamber. No crane had touched the hull. The extra water had done the lifting, and it stayed in the lock for the next boat that needed to come down.

Luis spent a cool morning in his grandmother's orchard near Winchester, where the Shenandoah Valley rises toward the mountains. Rows of apple trees stood on a slope. A ladder leaned at the first trunk, but it stopped below the high limbs.

Grandmother handed him a picking pole, a long stick with a small basket and a soft jaw at the top. "Pinch the stem," she said. "If you yank, the apple bruises, and a bruised apple cannot ride in the market box." Luis eased a red apple into the basket on the pole and lowered it into a wooden crate.

At the sorting table they made three piles. Smooth apples went into boxes for the stand in town. Apples with soft brown marks went into a tub for cider. The smallest apples, no bigger than a walnut, stayed in a pail by the fence.

"Why not cider for the tiny ones too?" Luis asked. Grandmother nodded toward the woods. "The deer take those at dusk. They already know the pail. If I leave the little apples on the ground under the trees, the deer wander into the rows and break low branches. The pail keeps their visit at the edge."

Luis labeled the market boxes and carried the cider tub to the shed. He left the small pail where the grass met the fence. That evening two deer ate from it and then turned back toward the woods, away from the trees.

Priya and her father drove toward the ferry ramp at Scotland, on the south bank of the James River. They were heading to a cousin's house in Surry County. A painted sign said the crossing was part of the state highway and that drivers did not pay a toll.

The ramp looked empty. Father slowed the car. "We missed it," he said. "The boat is gone, and there is no line." A beagle in the only other car stuck its head out and yawned, as if waiting were ordinary.

A deckhand in a yellow vest waved them into a holding lane. "You did not miss it," she said. "The ferry is at the Jamestown side, loading cars to come here. It should reach this ramp in about twenty minutes. An empty ramp can mean the boat is working the other shore."

While they waited, Priya read a board that showed how vehicles would sit on the deck. Wide trucks belonged in the middle, where the crew could balance the weight. Smaller cars filled the sides. When the ferry nosed into the slip, the deckhand sent their car to the left lane and a truck of crate greens to the center.

On the water, Priya stood at the rail until the wind lifted her paper map. She caught it and sat down. Father folded the map flat. "Next time an empty ramp fools me, I will ask where the boat is before I turn around."

The boardwalk at the Great Dismal Swamp felt springy under Ellis's shoes. Dark water sat on both sides, and cypress trunks rose like columns. A knee of wood stuck out of the shallows near the rail. Ellis shifted his weight, ready to step off and touch it.

Ranger Cole held up a hand. "The boards are the path," she said. "Under that shiny surface, peat, a thick layer of old plants, can hide water deeper than your waist. This swamp is also home to bears and snakes that need the wet ground left quiet."

Ellis put both hands on the rail and stayed on the walk. A painted turtle climbed onto a log and stretched its neck. A small yellow bird flashed in a shrub and vanished. Ranger Cole called it a warbler and asked the class not to clap or chase it.

At the last bench, Ellis opened his sketchbook. He drew the cypress knee, the turtle's stretched neck, and a blank space where the bird had been. The turtle was still on the log when the class turned back. The knee stayed in the water, unheld and whole.

I stood in the creek beside my aunt's skiff near Morattico, on the Northern Neck. The water reached the tops of my boots. Aunt June dumped a pile of oysters onto a board laid across two sawhorses and handed me a glove and a ruler.

"Three inches or bigger can come home," she said. "A smaller oyster goes back into the creek so it can keep growing. Measure the shell, not the lump of mud on it."

I found a shell that was wide and pretty, with ridges like a closed fan. It was only two inches across. I started to drop it into the keep bucket because I liked the shape. Aunt June caught my wrist.

"Look at the bumps," she said. She turned the shell over. Tiny rough dots, no bigger than grains of rice, clung to the smooth inside edge. "Those are spat, baby oysters, stuck where they can grow. An empty-looking shell can still be a roof for them. Pretty is not the same as ready."

I rinsed the shell and set it in the return basket. The keep bucket held only the oysters that met the ruler. When we slid the small shells and the spat back into the creek, they sank without a splash I could hear. Aunt June squeezed my shoulder. "You just planted next year's work, Hattie."

Saturday at the city market in Roanoke, Camille arranged jars of honey on a blue cloth. Her grandfather's hives stood in Botetourt County, some near clover fields and one row beside a patch of buckwheat. The clover honey glowed pale gold. The buckwheat honey was dark, almost brown.

Camille slid the dark jars to the back. "People will think something went wrong," she told her brother, Noel. "They look burnt." Noel raised an eyebrow but kept stacking the pale jars in front.

A customer named Mrs. Keene pointed at a dark jar anyway. "Is that one spoiled?" she asked. "I want the light kind if the dark is old." Grandfather turned the jar so the label faced forward. "Different flowers," he said. "Bees that work clover make the light honey. Bees that work buckwheat make this darker honey, and it tastes stronger. Color here is a clue about the plant, not a sign of spoiling. Smell it."

Mrs. Keene sniffed, tasted a drop from a wooden spoon, and bought the dark jar. Camille carried the rest of the buckwheat jars to the front and wrote a card in thick letters: Clover, mild. Buckwheat, strong. Neither jar is a mistake.

Noel grinned. "You hid the interesting one." Camille taped the card to the cloth. "I hid it because I was sure I knew what people wanted. The label does that job better than my guess."

At Cape Henry, where the Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic, Malik stood between two lighthouses. The older tower was pale stone, and its door stood open for visitors. The newer tower rose farther down the point. Its lamp was the one ships still used.

"We should tell sailors to watch the old one," Malik said to his aunt. "It looks like the real lighthouse. The other one is just a tall spare." Aunt Nadine, a guide on the grounds, shook her head. "The old tower is a piece of history we can climb. The newer tower holds the working light. Its flash has a pattern, a rhythm ships can match to their charts. Age does not decide which lamp is on duty."

They climbed the old tower. From the lantern gallery, Malik saw the beach curve and the newer tower's glass wink once, then again. A freighter sat far out, small as a shoe.

"That ship is not admiring the view," Aunt Nadine said. "Someone on board is counting the flashes. If both towers flashed the same way, the count would not tell the ship where it was."

Malik touched the old wall on the way down. "This one is for remembering," he said. "The other one is for finding the point in the dark."

Mina joined a cleanup along Four Mile Run, the creek that threads through her part of Arlington. Yesterday's rain had lifted the water. A rusty shopping cart lay on its side in the channel, one wheel hooked on a bent piece of metal.

Mina waded in to her ankles and reached for the handle. Mr. Vargas, the crew leader, called her back. "That drop-off is deeper than it looks, and the metal can cut a hand. Adults in waders will pull the cart. Your work is the bank."

Mina's face went hot. Picking up bottles felt like the leftover job. She took a clipboard anyway and walked the bend with two classmates. They gathered bags, bottles, and one soaked mitten, and Mina made a pencil mark for each bottle.

At the end of the hour the marks added up to forty-six bottles on that one bend. Mr. Vargas photographed the page. "The city uses counts like this to decide where to put a rack that catches trash before it washes downstream," he said. "I can lift a cart today. Your page tells them where the cart's cousins come from."

Mina looked at the neat rows of marks. The cart was already in a truck. Her list was still working.

Reed's Mill stood on a creek west of Staunton, with a wooden wheel taller than the doorway. Rosa visited on a Monday with her class. The wheel did not move. The sluice, the chute that sends pond water onto the paddles, was dry. A classmate whispered, "It is broken. They only keep it for pictures."

The miller, Mr. Reed, pointed to a sign beside the door. "Wheel turns when the pond is full," he read. "We grind on Fridays. On Monday the pond is still filling from the creek. A still wheel can be a wheel that is waiting, not a wheel that has failed."

He let them look through a side window at the round millstone. "When the sluice opens, water pushes the paddles. The wheel turns a shaft. The shaft turns the stone. Corn poured between the stones comes out as meal. Close the sluice, and the stone stops, even if the hopper is full of corn."

The yard kitchen was open that Monday, and the smell of pie drifted across the grass. "The pies do not need the wheel," Mr. Reed said. "Do not let the bakery fool you into thinking the wheel is a decoration."

Rosa came back with her father on Friday. Water flashed in the sluice. The wheel turned, and the floor hummed under her shoes. She set one hand on the doorframe and listened. The quiet Monday had been part of the work.

I wanted the race. Bess was half a wheel behind me on the Virginia Creeper Trail outside Damascus, and the wooden trestle was the place I meant to pull ahead. The boards ran high over the river, with gaps between some of them and railings on both sides.

A volunteer, Mr. Sloane, stood at the near end with a sign. "Yield to anyone on foot or on a horse," he said. "And walk your bikes across the trestle. A rider who stares at the far end can drop a wheel into a gap."

"It is only a minute of riding," I said. "We can steer." Bess put a foot down. "The sign is the rule, Omar. A race is a bad reason to forget it." She got off and pushed her bike. I felt silly standing over my pedals while she moved ahead, but I got off too.

From the middle of the trestle the river looked far and bright. I kept my eyes on the boards in front of my tire. On the other side Bess waited, not gloating. "You can have the lead on the flat," she said. "I wanted us both on this side of the gap."

I nodded. The rest of the trail was fast. The trestle was the part we walked, and I was glad the sign had been louder than my hurry.

Willa visited a peanut field in Southampton County just as the plants were ready to be dug. She looked at the green leaves and at the little yellow flowers that had already faded. "Where are the peanuts?" she asked. "I thought they hung on the bush, like the beans in our garden."

Mr. Hale drove a plant puller, a blade that runs under the row, along the first plants. He lifted one plant and shook the soil away. Pale shells clustered on the underground stems, still damp. "The flower sends a peg down into the ground," he said. "The peanut grows at the end of that peg. You were searching the part that makes shade. The crop was under your shoes."

The dug plants were flipped so the shells faced the sun, then left in long rows called windrows. "They need to dry," Mr. Hale said. "If we load wet peanuts into the wagon, they can spoil before they reach the buying point. Sun and air do that job in the field."

Willa walked beside a windrow and did not step on the shells. She touched one peg that was still attached to a stem. The leaves above her were only a roof. The part she had come to see had been hiding in the dirt the whole morning.

Theo stood on the path under Natural Bridge and tipped his head back. The stone arch crossed Cedar Creek high above him. It looked so even that he tugged his sister's sleeve. "A crew built this," he said. "You can see where a crane would have set the middle piece."

Inez opened the brochure from the entrance. "Read the exhibit before you give the creek a construction job," she said. The panel explained that the arch is limestone and that water carved it over a very long time. Cedar Creek still runs underneath. No crane had lifted the span into place.

A guide stood by a rope near the rocks. "Stay on the path," she said. "The stone stays slick from spray, and the creek can rise. We do not climb on the arch or wade past the rope. The bridge has lasted because people leave the rock alone."

Theo put his camera away and took out a pencil. He sat on a bench and drew the curve, the trees gripping the top, and the rope in the foreground. Inez looked at the sketch. "You kept the whole arch," she said, "and you did not have to stand on it."

Theo added the creek with a few lines. "Water made it," he said. "I can visit it without pretending I did."

From the deck of a harbor tour in Norfolk, Lila watched a tugboat press its nose against a container ship. The ship was so tall that its stacked boxes hid part of the sky. Beside it, the tug looked like a toy.

"The ship must be helping the tug," Lila said. "It is bigger, so it should be the one in charge." The guide, Mr. Chen, lowered his binoculars. "Size is not the same as the right tool. A ship that long does not turn easily in this narrow channel. The tug's engines are built for pushing and pulling at slow speed. The tug nudges the bow, the front of the ship, until the ship lines up with the pier. The large boat needs the small one because the space is tight."

Lila watched the tug press, back off, and press again. A gap of water opened between the ship and a pier piling, then closed to the width the dock workers wanted. Nobody on the big ship waved the tug away.

"I was counting boxes," Lila said. "I should have been watching the turn." Mr. Chen smiled. "The turn is the story. The boxes are only the cargo along for the ride."

Rain tapped the windows of a library in Alexandria. Sam needed a picture of the waterfront in 1920 for a class project. He tried the computers first. The pictures that came up showed today's piers, a carousel, and a boat tour. None of them showed the year on his assignment sheet.

Ms. Okonkwo, the librarian, led him to a room with wide flat drawers. "Some of the city's memory is on paper that never went online," she said. She opened a drawer of photographs given by a neighborhood family. "These stay in this room. You may sketch and take notes. You may not take a photo home, even for one night."

Sam found a picture of a ferry slip crowded with wooden carts and one ice wagon. A caption in pencil said Cameron Slip, 1920. The slip stood where he knew a park lawn now. He wrote three facts on an index card: the slip's name, the year, and the kinds of carts in the foreground. Then he sketched the ramp and the shed beside it.

Before he left, he slid the photograph back into its sleeve. "The screen had the waterfront," he said, "just not this one." Ms. Okonkwo nodded. "You asked a question the room could answer. Next time, start with what you need, and then choose the drawer or the screen."

The morning of the pony swim in Chincoteague, Della waited at the edge of the marsh with a camera under her jacket. Across the channel, ponies stood on Assateague, small and brown against the grass. A flag on the nearby boat snapped hard. The wind had a voice in it.

A firefighter in muddy boots lifted a megaphone. "The swim waits," he said. "The channel is too rough for the ponies. We do not put them in the water to please a crowd. If the wind drops, we will try this afternoon. If it does not, we try another day. Tickets to stand here are not a promise."

Della's father closed the camera case. "Their safety sets the clock," he said. "Our plans fit around that." They walked back into town instead of standing in the mud.

At a family booth, Della sold cups of water to people who had also left the marsh. She wrote the morning on a napkin so she would remember the wording: rough water, ponies first. When a younger child asked if the swim was ruined, Della shook her head. "It is postponed," she said. "Ruined would mean we made them swim anyway."

Along the James, the low path bent through April shade. A blue so thick it looked like a rug lay across the leaves from the muddy bank to the root of a beech.

I wanted stems in a jar, a bright gift for my teacher. My hand went out. A ranger's sign said the bulbs crush easily, and toes should stay in line.

I sat on the bench and drew one nodding bell, the bend of the stem, and a beetle on a leaf. The pencil kept what fingers should not take. The flowers stayed for someone who would come later.

That evening the page lay on my teacher's desk. She taped it up and said I had brought the blue and left the woods. Mud marked my shoes. The flowers were still by the river.

I woke to wind worrying the porch of our house in Cape Charles, on the Eastern Shore. Before breakfast, Mom carried the chairs into the shed. She filled two jugs at the sink and set a flashlight on the counter. The radio said a nor'easter was pushing water up the bay side.

"No school," I said. "We can walk the beach road and look for shells." Mom shook her head. "The day off is a safety plan, not a holiday. The beach road floods when this wind piles the tide. High water can cover a street that looked dry at noon. We stay in, and we keep the door rug rolled back so it will not soak up whatever sneaks under the sill."

I wanted to argue. Then the radio added that tall trucks might be stopped on the bridge-tunnel, while cars could still cross until a later notice. Mom traced the route with her finger and looked at me. "Your uncle is not coming today, Harris. A trip that is allowed is not the same as a trip that is wise."

Rain arrived sideways. I read at the kitchen table and listened to the gutter fill and spill. When the wind eased, the street shone, but we did not open the beach bag. I wrote a line for Monday's class: a cancelled day can be the way a family stays put.