Where There's Some Will.....

Recently I was invited to teach an English class on the last day before spring break. The topic was Hamlet and the theme revenge, and no I didn't see any irony in the invite - the teacher and I go back quite a ways!  As I set up for my class I heard the soundtrack of Kevin Branagh's Henry V from an adjoining classroom. Forgive my mixing of poets but "My heart leaps up, when I behold" such a situation. It would seem that when it comes to teaching Shakespeare, the play is still the thing.

There really seems to be two types of English teachers - those who love teaching Shakespeare and those who don't. Firmly in the first camp, I discovered early on that having a personal love of Shakespeare only goes so far when trying to teach it to teenagers. The literature is not without its challenges and, unless a teacher makes the plays easily and quickly accessible to all, its easy for students to claim Shakespeare is too hard, and too boring, to be worth the effort.

Fortunately there's a wealth of resources available. The British Council and BBC offer an excellent page answering the questions "Why teach Shakespeare?" "What Shakespeare to teach" and "How to Teach Shakespeare". The site also links to other resource pages. Worried your students might not be "up to the challenge"? Non academic learners get into Shakespeare without problems, so long as its presented well. Check out the site How to Teach Shakespeare to Reluctant Learners for a Canadian perspective on engaging all students.

Shakespeare's plots have impacted popular culture to an incredible extent. It is often surprising, and enlightening, for students to discover the degree to which ideas from plays like Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Othello and Henry V have infiltrated modern entertainment franchises.  Comparing "The Simpsons" six minute Hamlet to the original can be amusing, and illustrative, of just how much students have drawn from the real play. Finding common themes and discussing the comparative entertainment value of Disney's "The Lion King" and Shakepeare's Hamlet or Henry V always generates energetic student debate (especially if one suggests that Shakespeare is superior!)

I tell classes that Shakespeare was must see entertainment for its day, chock full of  the same things students hope to see in movies today!  Life and death drama, forbidden romance, paranormal activity, violent conflict, evil villains and tragic heroes and heroines abound. Shakespeare might be more "Hunger Games" than "Twilight",  but its themes are universal and still resonate with audiences 500 years after they were first performed.  Far from being  "Much Ado About Nothing", Shakespeare should be a high point in everyone's academic year.

More Data, Please

Imagine my vexation when one moment I read in The News Tribune that, according to a survey by the University of Washington, Washington schools have not done too well with their federal turnaround money then turn around and read that a Center for Education Policy report says that most schools across the country have made gains with their turnaround money.

On the one hand, WA State Superintendent Dorn says he�s going to wait for the �actual data� before judging in Washington.

On the other hand, Secretary of Education Duncan observes that the nation's lowest-performing schools appear to be showing preliminary promise, according to student-achievement data.  But it�s too early to draw hard and fast conclusions from only one year of data.

More data is the only answer.  I�m sure it�ll all be clear next year...when we get the school district data.

Replicating the findings raises concern about the standardized test

After teaching 95 students how to decode the standardized test questions and answers without reading the passage, I gave them an 8-question, no passages reading test.  Where they should have gotten 25 per cent (random guessing with four answer options), the group average was over 60 per cent.  Indeed, the average for the 95 students was 5.1 corrects, 2 � times the expected outcome from chance.  The standard deviation of the set was 1.38.  The t-test p value for these results 0.0001.  In other words, the probability that 95 testers would average 5.1 corrects when they should have averaged 2 (according to chance) is exceedingly low.

I repeated the test with 89 of the same 8^th graders, using 8 different question and answer sets.  This time the only instruction was to "think about the patterns we talked about last week."  The group average was 5.3 corrects with a standard deviation of 1.33.  These results also return a p value of 0.0001.  If possible, the student performance in the second test was even more �extremely statistically significant� than in the first test.

The replication of this test of students' ability to identify patterns in questions and answers calls into doubt the accuracy and usefulness of Washington state's standardized reading multiple choice questions.

Intoxicated by the Freedom to Choose

We attended a homeschool conference this past week in Greenville, SC.  I still had a feeling of "shock and awe" to see the vast numbers of people who homeschool.  I guess we are still new enough to homeschooling that I feel a bit dumbfounded by seeing so many different people "bucking the system."  But unlike last year, we didn't attend seminar after seminar.  This year, we went to browse, peruse and explore all the different curricula choices from the plethora of vendors.

Like any good homeschool mom, I did a lot of research prior to going to the conference.  I had a four page Google document of different programs that I wanted to examine.  I don't use a set curriculum.  I hand tailor the best I can, to each child, their learning styles and strengths.  I would put them back into school if I wanted the "one size fits all approach."  There is such a thrill from choosing what your child will learn.

Who ever heard a teacher say, "I looked through the book.  It seems boring.  We're not going to use that."?  It is not something that occurs often in a traditional school.  It isn't that teachers don't care or like the dull and unimaginative text books.  (Yes, I know that there are some bad, nightmare teachers that don't care and do like dull.  But I believe that they are in the minority.) Traditional teachers are constrained by a system within which they must work.  I'm not.

It is intoxicating to look at a perfectly functional grammar program that is about as thrilling as watching paint dry and having the power to say, "No way!  Not for my kid!"  I want something that will keep my children (and me) awake and not bore us all to tears.  So like Dory the fish in Finding Nemo, "Just keep swimming."  Keep looking until you do find something that fits your family.  What a novel thought!  Demand more and keep looking until you find it.

So that is exactly what we did.  We brought home a trunk load of books that we felt fit our kids and covered what we decided they should learn this upcoming year.  It makes me giddy with anticipation.  I am eagerly awaiting the rest of our books to come from Amazon.  (Yes, they will take over the world because they have everything!)

It is intoxicating the control and the freedom.  Just as alcohol could be dangerous and lead to abuse if not handled responsibly, the control and freedom to choose what your child learns needs to be handled responsibly.  It is not a perfect world, I am sure that there are a few crazies out there who want their children to study "The Fascinating World of Navel Lint" or "Competitive Underwater Basket-Weaving for Elementary Students." However, my children won't be joining them.

I have tried to design a rigorous, challenging curriculum that will still be (INSERT "gasp" here) fun.  Hopefully I will have succeeded.  If not, I also have the intoxicating freedom to toss something that is not working for us into the trash and try something brand new.

Bad Tests, Teacher Evaluations and Incentives

I taught 95 students how to decode the standardized test questions and answers without reading the passage.  Then I gave them an 8-question, no passages reading test, and where they should have gotten 25 per cent (random guessing with four answer options), the group average was over 60 per cent.  The identifiability of patterns in questions and answers calls into doubt the accuracy and usefulness of Washington state's standardized reading multiple choice questions.




More than 40 states have joined the so-called Common Core State Standards and the associated testing consortium that allows the members to coordinate their standard-setting and assessment.  This is the closest we've yet gotten to a national education standard.  

One consequence of this development is that we can move even more determinedly forward to connect students' standardized test scores to teacher evaluations.  Along the way, though, many teeth are gnashing over the mechanics of just how to make this linkage.  For instance, a significant impetus last fall for the teacher strike in the district where I live (Tacoma, WA) derived from the contention over the way to join evaluations and scores, and the resolution of that strike created a(nother!) committee to figure it out.  Their recommendations are still forthcoming.

But the anxiety over implementation is only part of the story.  We would do well to take a serious look at the test side of the equation by itself.  Education reformers and the business community, among others, come out big for testing, with business cheering for increased accountability of teachers and schools by way of the politically elusive test-evaluation connection.

The debate about teacher evaluations and test scores proceeds along predictable lines.  Test opponents are tagged as unionists only interested in keeping cushy jobs.  Test supporters are thought woefully out of touch about how class rooms really function.  All the while, the test itself, that thing and process on which so much of the acrimony suspends, sits rather unassumingly by.  We talk little about the test or the test process, and, by implication, bear great faith in the device and its accuracy and reliability in assessing students' knowledge and capacities.

But just how much faith should we put in the test and in procedures that use the scores as evidence to determine anything beyond whether a student did well or poorly on that specific test?  Can we rely on the tests to actually and accurately measure knowledge and capability in a particular subject area?  

It turns out that for the reading test at least, the answers may be disquieting.  The reading MSP (Measurement of Student Progress, Washington's state standardized test) exhibits patterns which make it more an examination of 'test taking' than of reading.  Sampling a few test questions indicates that we can discern a set of predictable patterns in the question-making and the answer construction.  These patterns give savvy test takers an advantage and at the same time make the test a less than useful or accurate measure of a student's reading performance, or of how well a particular teacher is doing his or her work.

The following tutorial, is based on a 3-question OSPI (WA's state education agency) 'released item.' Released items are test material available at the OSPI web site, and consist of a passage and question set that was earlier beta-tested on real students, unbeknownst to them, as a non-scored section of a real MSP test, will prepare you to "take the MSP" by using the patterns identified here.  

Following the tutorial are two sets of four questions from other released items.  See if you can't make a pretty good guess about the answers, or at least narrow your choice down to the two best answers, or identify the easy way to answer the question.  (Correct answers follow at the end.)

Yes, to best evaluate the presence and identifiability of patterns, this test process will proceed without any reading passages.  Just the title, the questions and the answer options.

Most 8^th grade students (the group I teach) have up to 5 years of experience with Washington's standardized tests and when I explained the patterns described below, many realized they had a general, if somewhat unconscious, awareness that they knew or at least recognized them.   All patterns explained here have been identified by 6 years of working with OSPI released items, and listening to students observe--in ways only teenagers can--the similarity between released items and actual MSP items.  Teachers are forbidden�along with everyone besides students and the state bureaucrats�from looking at actual MSP tests.

Clearly, released items are not test items, but with a review process as tortuous as what each item must pass through, released items and actual test items are unlikely to be significantly different.  After all the bias and sensitivity screening prospective test items go through.)  If they are different, then the students' years of experience with real MSP questions shouldn't transfer to success on released items.

Just what are these patterns, then?  The best explanation comes from looking at the examples below.

1.   What is the main idea of "Excerpt from Iditarod Dream"?

1. Sled dog racing is a thrilling and dangerous sport.
2. Sled dog racing requires teamwork and training. 
3. Sled dog racing requires specialized equipment. 
4. Sled dog racing can be a family activity.

First, this is a main idea question, so we need to have a sentence that is 'worthy' of serving as a main idea.  It's hard to explain, but ask a nearby 8th grader, he or she will understand that some of these just don't 'feel' like MSP-type main idea answers.  They're not serious or important or high-quality enough, or at least they're not as serious as some other options.  

'Specialized equipment' isn't as important a point as either 'teamwork and training' or 'thrilling and dangerous.'  'Family activity' is almost non-sensical in that it violates expectation of what we might think or hear about dog sledding.  While there may indeed be a family out there that makes sledding one of their activities, this would be an oddity.  The MSP doesn't usually make main points out of oddities.

'Teamwork and training' or 'thrilling and dangerous' are the best options, then.  But the MSP often includes readings with a kind of moral element.  There are an unusual number of uplifting or inspiring stories.  Whether a little known figure gallant for service to others, or a determined soul who has surmounted obstacles to achieve something and/or (better yet) learned some important life lesson, MSP questions go through a vetting process that renders controversial or negative material unlikely to make the final cut.  

Thinking of it in this way, 'thrilling and dangerous' has just a hint of the selfish and irresponsible.  'Teamwork and training,' by contrast, is the kind of emphasis the MSP can and likes to support.  I'd probably go with that...and I'd turn out to be right.

According to "Excerpt from Iditarod Dream," why does Dusty decide to help the other racers build a fire?

1. He uses the fire light to see the trail markers
2. He thinks the fire will help him stay awake. 
3. He is following the rule of the wilderness. 
4. He needs to cook the dogs' frozen meat.

MSP can tend toward the 'unusual' option.  C jumped out immediately because it's of a different quality from the others, which are all specific and concrete things.  C, by contrast, is an interestingly oblique answer that hints of something 'higher' than the other three.  The combination of uniqueness and grandness makes C too hard to pass up, and doing so would yield a wrong answer--C is correct.

According to "Excerpt from Iditarod Dream," how would Dusty most likely react to entering another dog sled race?

1. He would be hopeful because he came so close to winning.
2. He would be nervous because he had trouble staying on the trail at night.
3. He would be excited because he knew how it felt to cross the finish line in the lead.
4. He would be anxious because he ran out of supplies and needed more for the next race.

On first blush, this ostensibly 'prediction' question seems unanswerable without reading the passage.  Indeed, how can we predict anything with such a dearth of knowledge of the situation.  Further, each question in this response contains a detail that we can only guess at, so we're left with a higher degree of uncertainty than in the previous questions.  But ultimately we are trying to get the correct test answer here, not predict something about Dusty, so things are not as hopeless as they seem.  

First, cover all the answers from the word 'because' onward.  You are left with a list of adjectives about how Dusty would feel.  The old advice to 'look for the stronger word,' and the current advice to think about uplift and inspiration could be of some help.  Granted, every test item won't work this way, but following these two 'rules,' C--excited--breaks out to an early lead in our race to decide.  Option A has the tinge of the overly competitive.  MSP probably tends to de-emphasize things like winning.  Just look how the test renders 'winning' in option C--'knew how it felt to cross the finish line in the lead.'  They seem to be at pains to avoid a word that sits uncomfortably in the social culture of collaborative education.  8th graders may not follow or care about the culture of education, but they do pick up on patterns, and the combination of that quirky way of saying 'win' and the most upbeat adjective--'excited'--make C a plausible option.  

Granted, this explanation is much more abstruse and convoluted, so do some more work by covering every answer from the adjective back to the beginning of the sentence and leave exposed what really are the first part of four conditional statements.   For instance, option A can rearrange to say "He came close to winning, so he will be hopeful."  

You'll note that not all the events can occur in the story.  How could Dusty come close to winning and cross the finish line in the lead? He can't, so either A or C is incorrect.  It's unlikely that both A and C are incorrect, as Dusty had to either win or not win, and the answer set would be strangely vexing if one of the causal elements (latter part of the statement) were true, but that answer were wrong. It would indeed be a more challenging test if readers had to actually make inferences about Dusty's feeling--by, say, dealing with several true statements.  But such are not as easily graded as the MSP needs to be.  

Using the 'deep' or 'serious' test, D is the least likely--it does not have the feel of high level of thinking. B is a contender, but its chances are reduced by the difficulty of both A and C then being incorrect.  I'm going with C, the odd wording for 'win' being too strong a pull to avoid.  

(At another time and place it would be worth considering how this unusual wording is really meant to distract some testers.  Some students will be vexed by the difference between 'win' and 'cross the finish line in the lead,' and so will not be sure if this is the right answer.  This vexation will help ensure that some students will get the answer wrong, thereby creating the necessary 'distribution' of answers and scores.  This opens a whole different problem--the effort to measure whether individual students are meeting a standard by misusing testing devices and procedures whose design actually distributes students across the outcome spectrum.)

Now, when you eventually do read the passage, all you really have to do is simply confirm which of the events described in the latter part of each sentence actually happened.  Did Dusty win?  If so, it's C.  Most of the time the option set will contain only one accurate description of an event which actually occurs in the story, making the corresponding answer option the obvious choice.   

The student taking the test does not really have to predict, s/he just has to look for which of the events described in the answer options really did happen.  Almost certainly only one occurred, but in the effort to make the test something more than matching (the story event to the correlated answer option) some slightly inaccurate permutation of one of the other events will appear as an answer.  In this case, the oddly inaccurate one is the 'going off the trail' option, and the correct answer is C.  (I confess, I've still not read the passage accompanying these questions, but my 7^th grade daughter confirmed these details.)

Interestingly, this question was categorized as 'comprehension,' which presumably ranks below 'analysis' on the intellectual spectrum.  The question is framed to look like a prediction question but really isn't.  The student's ability to comprehend which detail (from the latter half of the answer options) actually happened in the story is really what's getting tested.  They needn't predict anything.  This question was the hardest to answer without reading the passage, but many testers (including my daughter) were able to narrow it down to two answers and C was one of them. 

With the revelation of these patterns fresh in mind, I determined to figure out whether real test-taking students discerned the same patterns, or if I just unlocked my own odd, but ultimately individual, insight into the test.

I administered two different versions (one version is reproduced below) of 8-question, no reading passage tests to 95 8th grade students, and one 7th grader--my daughter.  I provided the title of the passage, followed by 4 questions on the passage, each question with 4 answer options.  Presumably, each student's average score would be in the area of 2 corrects (1 out of 4), as would the overall average of all students.  

Having identified and explained the test patterns to the students, I predicted that scores would be significantly higher than what random chance would expect.  Indeed, the average for the 95 students was 5.1 corrects, 2 � times the expected outcome from chance.  The standard deviation of the set was 1.38.  The t-test p value for these results 0.0001.  In other words, the probability that 95 testers would average 5.1 corrects when they should have averaged 2 (according to chance) is exceedingly low.

These findings raise a variety of questions about the MSP multiple choice questions, and none of the likely answers are good.  Fundamentally, is this as good a reading test as we hope and want it to be?  Or is it a less a reading test than a test on test-taking?  

If students can identify patterns of questions and their answers and get much better than expected scores just from knowing and seeing those patterns, then this particular standardized test is not really testing reading ability.  We could certainly claim that savvy (i.e., 'smart') students will more likely figure out the patterns and get the advantage on the test, and that such savvy is positively related to reading ability, but this adds another layer of uncertainty into the assessment process.  

If the test writers have corrected these patterns in the actual test items, the rest of us would never know, as gaining access to the test is not an easy process.  The screening process for test questions, with at least three phases of content, bias and sensitivity filtering, narrows the range of plausibly acceptable items, and increases the probability that the released (rejected) items are essentially similar to the actual test items.  When I described the patterns in the released items, my 8^th grade students certainly seemed familiar with them.  This indicates some compatibility between the rejected and the accepted test items.

Given all this�the substantially better than expected student scores, a test-writing process that probably generates a narrow range of question/answer design alternatives, the secrecy of the test production�we can only wonder at just how useful this test really is.  But I can say this, if my professional evaluation is going to be tied to such a test, I'm teaching every one of these tricks.  

Decoding Standardized Test (at least WA's MSP) Questions

From the released items discussion below...

Explanations of how to decode the Questions and Answers without reading the passages.

1.   What is the main idea of �Excerpt from Iditarod Dream�?

A.   Sled dog racing is a thrilling and dangerous sport.

B.   Sled dog racing requires teamwork and training. 

C.   Sled dog racing requires specialized equipment. 

D.  Sled dog racing can be a family activity.

First, this is a main idea question, so we need to have a sentence that is �worthy� of serving as a main idea.  It�s hard to explain, but ask a nearby 8th grader, he or she will understand that some of these just don�t �feel� like MSP-type main idea answers.  They�re not serious or important or high-quality enough, or at least they�re not as serious as some other options. 

�Specialized equipment� isn�t as important a point as either �teamwork and training� or �thrilling and dangerous.�  �Family activity� is almost non-sensical in that it violates expectation of what we might think or hear about dog sledding.  While there may indeed be a family out there that makes sledding one of their activities, this would be an oddity.  The MSP doesn�t usually make main points out of oddities.

�Teamwork and training� or �thrilling and dangerous� are the best options, then.  But the MSP often includes readings with a kind of moral element.  There are an unusual number of uplifting or inspiring stories.  Whether a little known figure gallant for service to others, or a determined soul who has surmounted obstacles to achieve something and/or (better yet) learned some important life lesson, MSP questions go through a vetting process that renders controversial or negative material unlikely to make the final cut. 

Thinking of it in this way, �thrilling and dangerous� has just a hint of the selfish and irresponsible.  �Teamwork and training,� by contrast, is the kind of emphasis the MSP can and likes to support.  I�d probably go with that...and I�d turn out to be right.

According to �Excerpt from Iditarod Dream,� why does Dusty decide to help the other racers build a fire?

A.   He uses the fire light to see the trail markers

B.   He thinks the fire will help him stay awake. 

C.   He is following the rule of the wilderness. 

D.  He needs to cook the dogs� frozen meat.

MSP can tend toward the �unusual� option.  C jumped out immediately because it�s of a different quality from the others, which are all specific and concrete things.  C, by contrast, is an interestingly oblique answer that hints of something �higher� than the other three.  The combination of uniqueness and grandness makes C too hard to pass up, and doing so would yield a wrong answer--C is correct.

According to �Excerpt from Iditarod Dream,� how would Dusty most likely react to entering another dog sled race?

A.    He would be hopeful because he came so close to winning.

B.    He would be nervous because he had trouble staying on the trail at night.

C.    He would be excited because he knew how it felt to cross the finish line in the lead.

D.   He would be anxious because he ran out of supplies and needed more for the next race.

On first blush, this ostensibly �prediction� question seems unanswerable without reading the passage.  Indeed, how can we predict anything with such a dearth of knowledge of the situation.  Further, each question in this response contains a detail that we can only guess at, so we�re left with a higher degree of uncertainty than in the previous questions.  But ultimately we are trying to get the correct test answer here, not predict something about Dusty, so things are not as hopeless as they seem. 

First, cover all the answers from the word �because� onward.  You are left with a list of adjectives about how Dusty would feel.  The old advice to �look for the stronger word,� and the current advice to think about uplift and inspiration could be of some help.  Granted, every test item won�t work this way, but following these two �rules,� C--excited--breaks out to an early lead in our race to decide.  Option A has the tinge of the overly competitive.  MSP probably tends to de-emphasize things like winning.  Just look how the test renders �winning� in option C--�knew how it felt to cross the finish line in the lead.�  They seem to be at pains to avoid a word that sits uncomfortably in the social culture of collaborative education.  8th graders may not follow or care about the culture of education, but they do pick up on patterns, and the combination of that quirky way of saying �win� and the most upbeat adjective--�excited�--make C a plausible option. 

Granted, this explanation is much more abstruse and convoluted, so do some more work by covering every answer from the adjective back to the beginning of the sentence and leave exposed what really are the first part of four conditional statements.   For instance, option A can rearrange to say �He came close to winning, so he will be hopeful.� 

You�ll note that not all the events can occur in the story.  How could Dusty come close to winning and cross the finish line in the lead? He can�t, so either A or C is incorrect.  It�s unlikely that both A and C are incorrect, as Dusty had to either win or not win, and the answer set would be strangely vexing if one of the causal elements (latter part of the statement) were true, but that answer were wrong. It would indeed be a more challenging test if readers had to actually make inferences about Dusty�s feeling--by, say, dealing with several true statements.  But such are not as easily graded as the MSP needs to be. 

Using the �deep� or �serious� test, D is the least likely--it does not have the feel of high level of thinking. B is a contender, but its chances are reduced by the difficulty of both A and C then being incorrect.  I�m going with C, the odd wording for �win� being too strong a pull to avoid. 

Now, when you eventually do read the passage, all you really have to do is simply confirm which of the events described in the latter part of each sentence actually happened.  Did Dusty win?  If so, it�s C.  Most of the time the option set will contain only one accurate description of an event which actually occurs in the story, making the corresponding answer option the obvious choice.  

The student taking the test does not really have to predict, s/he just has to look for which of the events described in the answer options really did happen.  Almost certainly only one occurred, but in the effort to make the test something more than matching (the story event to the correlated answer option) some slightly inaccurate permutation of one of the other events will appear as an answer.  In this case, the oddly inaccurate one is the �going off the trail� option, and the correct answer is C.  (I confess, I�ve still not read the passage accompanying these questions, but my 7^th grade daughter confirmed these details.)

Interestingly, this question was categorized as �comprehension,� which presumably ranks below �analysis� on the intellectual spectrum.  The question is framed to look like a prediction question but really isn�t.  The student�s ability to comprehend which detail (from the latter half of the answer options) actually happened in the story is really what�s getting tested.  They needn�t predict anything.  This question was the hardest to answer without reading the passage, but many testers (including my daughter) were able to narrow it down to two answers and C was one of them.

Soon, I will post a new set of MSP released items....See if you can get them right.

Take the Measurement of Student Progress

Can you figure out the answers (or narrow it down to the top 2), just from the question and answer set?
In a later post, I'll explain how you can.  Give it a try for now.

Story 1--Excerpt from Iditarod Dream

1.  What is the main idea of �Excerpt from Iditarod Dream�?

1. Sled dog racing is a thrilling and dangerous sport. 
2. Sled dog racing requires teamwork and training. 
3. Sled dog racing requires specialized equipment. 
4. Sled dog racing can be a family activity.

2.  According to �Excerpt from Iditarod Dream,� why does Dusty decide to help the other racers build a fire?

1.         He uses the fire light to see the trail markers. 
2. He thinks the fire will help him stay awake. 
3. He is following the rule of the wilderness. 
4. He needs to cook the dogs� frozen meat.

3.   According to �Excerpt from Iditarod Dream,� how would Dusty most likely react to entering another dog sled race?

A. He would be hopeful because he came so close to winning.

B. He would be nervous because he had trouble staying on the trail at night.

C. He would be excited because he knew how it felt to cross the finish line in the lead.

D.    He would be anxious because he ran out of supplies and needed more for the next race.

Story 2--Nurses in the Wilderness

4.  Which sentence tells how the Frontier Nursing Service and the Mary Breckinridge Hospital are similar?

1.   Both have modern supplies.
2.   Both provide rural medical services.
3.   Both are located in Wendover, Kentucky.
4.   Both train people from all over the world.

5. What is most likely the author�s main purpose for writing this selection?

1.   To inform the reader about the history of rural nursing 
2.   To describe the effects of diseases on rural children 
3.   To persuade the reader to support rural medicine 
4.   To explain the difficulty of travel in rural areas

6.  According to the captions in the selection, which statement is true?

1.   Nurses often called Mary an angel on horseback. 
2.   Patients were sometimes carried to clinics by neighbors. 
3.   Mary�s first clinic became the Mary Breckinridge Hospital. 
4.   Riding horseback was the only form of travel to the hospital.

7.   Which sentence best summarizes the selection?

1.   Mary and her family were always very generous to others.
2.   The Frontier Nursing Service reached far beyond Kentucky.
3.   Rural nurses found creative ways to transport supplies and patients.
4.   Mary and other nurses provided compassionate medical care to rural people.

Story 3-- A Touch of Genius

8.  Which sentence from the selection is an opinion?

1.     �The same process happens with me.�
2.     �He lost his sight and partial use of one hand.� 
3.     �I had no words to describe the emotion I felt.� 
4.     �Behind this statement lies a remarkable story.�

9. Which sentence best states the main idea of the selection?

1.     Michael served in Vietnam. 
2.     Michael is a talented artist. 
3.     Michael teaches sculpture in the pueblo. 
4.     Michael has displays in museums around the world.

10.   Which statement is the most important conclusion that may be drawn from the selection?

1.   War teaches people to be strong. 
2.   Art can make a difference in a child�s life. 
3.   Hardships can motivate a person to greatness. 
4.   Mothers have a great influence on their children.

11. After reading this selection, what generalization can you make about Michael?

1.   Michael is a motivated individual. 
2.   Michael is an excellent teacher.
3.   Michael likes military service. 
4.   Michael loves animals.

ANSWERS IN NEXT POST.