Quiz & test questions Grade 11 English Language Arts
Reading Weatherby's Sampling Procedure: A Close-Reading Quiz
A grade 11 ELA assessment on close reading of a fictional plant's sampling procedure, with 12 items worth 50 points across recall, inference, and revision.
Objectives
- Students will determine the meaning of technical and general-academic words as they are used in a procedure.
- Students will trace conditional instructions through a multi-step procedure to predict a technician's action.
- Students will revise an ambiguous procedural sentence and justify the revision.
Vocabulary
Key words: standard operating procedure, residual, aseptic, sterile, conditional instruction, flush
Teacher overview
This assessment is worth 50 points and takes about 45 minutes. It gives students a fictional plant's written sampling procedure and a site rotation schedule, and asks twelve items that mix multiple choice, short answer, and two constructed responses. The reading skill under assessment is not scientific knowledge but procedural comprehension: following conditional instructions, resolving ambiguous references in dense text, and judging whether a sentence tells a reader what to do. Students often treat a procedure as a list to skim rather than as a text whose order carries meaning, so several items depend on the sequence rather than on any single step.
Assessment
Read the procedure and the schedule, then answer the items that follow. Both documents are fictional, written for this assessment.
Standard Operating Procedure SOP-14, Routine Distribution Sampling. Fictional Weatherby Water Treatment Plant.
Purpose: to collect routine bacteriological samples from the distribution system on the schedule required by the state.
Step one. Before leaving the plant, confirm that the cooler holds unopened sterile bottles, an ice pack, the field sheet, and a calibrated chlorine test kit. Do not use a bottle whose seal is broken.
Step two. At the site, select a cold-water tap that is directly connected to the main. Do not use a tap with an aerator, a hose attachment, or a swivel spout, or a tap supplied through a water softener, because each of these can hold bacteria that did not come from the main.
Step three. Remove any attachment. Wipe the outside of the spout. Open the tap fully and let it run for five minutes.
Step four. Reduce the flow to a pencil-width stream. Measure the free chlorine residual and record it on the field sheet before opening the bottle.
Step five. If the residual is below 0.2 milligrams per liter, flush for an additional five minutes and measure again. If the second reading is still below 0.2, collect the sample anyway, record both readings, and notify the shift supervisor the same day.
Step six. Open the sterile bottle. Do not touch the inside of the cap or the neck. Do not rinse the bottle, because it contains a preservative.
Step seven. Fill to the line, leaving the air space above it. Cap the bottle.
Step eight. Record the site number, time, and your initials. Place the bottle in the cooler with the ice pack. Do not lay the cooler flat in the vehicle.
Step nine. Deliver samples to the laboratory within six hours of the first collection of the day.
Site rotation schedule, fictional Weatherby distribution system
| Week of the month | Sites to be sampled |
|---|---|
| First week | 1, 4, 7, 12 |
| Second week | 2, 5, 8, 13 |
| Third week | 3, 6, 9, 14 |
| Fourth week | 1, 10, 11, 15 |
Note: Site 1 is sampled twice each month because it is the system's farthest point from the plant.
(3 points) In step six, the procedure says the bottle "contains a preservative" and instructs the technician not to rinse it. As used here, "preservative" most nearly means a substance that
- A) keeps the bottle sterile before it is opened
- B) holds the sample's condition steady until the laboratory tests it
- C) adds chlorine to the sample so bacteria cannot grow on the way to the laboratory
- D) prevents the plastic bottle from breaking down in the cooler
(3 points) Which statement best explains why step two forbids a tap with an aerator or a hose attachment?
- A) Those fittings reduce the flow rate too much for a valid sample
- B) Those fittings can harbor bacteria that did not come from the water main
- C) Those fittings interfere with the chlorine test kit
- D) Those fittings are usually connected to hot water lines
(4 points) According to the procedure, what two things must be true about the sample bottle before a technician uses it? Answer in one sentence.
(4 points) A technician measures a free chlorine residual of 0.1 milligrams per liter at a site, flushes five more minutes, and measures 0.15. State exactly what step five requires the technician to do next, in order.
(4 points) Step four says to measure the residual "before opening the bottle." Explain why the order of those two actions matters, using evidence from steps four and six.
(3 points) The procedure's sentences are short, and most begin with a verb. This pattern most likely reflects
- A) a writer with a limited vocabulary
- B) a legal requirement that procedures avoid subordinate clauses
- C) a reader who is standing at a tap and reading one instruction at a time
- D) a document written for state inspectors rather than for technicians
(4 points) Using the schedule, list the sites a technician sampling in the fourth week of the month must visit, and explain why one of those sites also appeared earlier in the month.
(4 points) A supervisor asks how many separate site visits the schedule requires in a month. Using the schedule, give the number and explain how the note about Site 1 affects your count.
(4 points) Step eight ends, "Do not lay the cooler flat in the vehicle." Explain what a technician cannot determine from that sentence, and name the information the sentence would need in order to be followed with confidence.
(5 points) Step three reads, "Remove any attachment. Wipe the outside of the spout. Open the tap fully and let it run for five minutes." Rewrite step three so that a first-day technician could not confuse the order or the object of each action, and explain in one sentence what your revision fixes.
(6 points) The procedure places the chlorine measurement in step four, before the bottle is opened in step six, and places the record-keeping in step eight, after the bottle is capped. Explain what the ordering of these three actions protects, and describe one error that a different order would allow.
(6 points) Write a short paragraph, four to six sentences, explaining SOP-14 to a technician on their first day. Cover what the technician must check before leaving the plant, what makes a tap acceptable, and what happens if the chlorine residual is low. Use your own sentences rather than the procedure's wording.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Answer Key
Answer: B. The preservative holds the sample's condition steady until the laboratory tests it, which is why rinsing the bottle would remove it. Option A confuses the preservative with the seal in step one, and option C would kill the bacteria the laboratory is trying to count; real sample bottles hold sodium thiosulfate, which neutralizes chlorine so the sample's condition holds steady.
Answer: B. Step two states directly that each of these fittings can hold bacteria that did not come from the main, which would make the result describe the fixture rather than the distribution system. The other options name plausible-sounding problems the procedure never raises.
Answer: The bottle must be sterile and unopened, and its seal must be unbroken; also accept "not rinsed" as one of the two. Award full credit for two conditions and half credit for one.
Answer: Collect the sample anyway, record both readings on the field sheet, and notify the shift supervisor the same day. All three actions are required, and the second reading of 0.15 is still below the 0.2 threshold, so the exception in step five applies rather than a third flush.
Answer: The residual has to be measured while the bottle is still sealed because the bottle contains a preservative and must not be rinsed or contaminated, and opening it first would expose the sterile interior during the time the technician spends running the test. Steps four and six together make the sealed bottle the last thing handled before filling.
Answer: C. The register fits a reader standing at a tap who reads one instruction at a time and must not have to unpack a complex sentence. Option B invents a requirement, and option D is contradicted by the field-level detail throughout.
Answer: Sites 1, 10, 11, and 15. Site 1 also appears in the first week because the schedule's note states that it is sampled twice each month, being the system's farthest point from the plant.
Answer: Sixteen site visits. The schedule lists four sites in each of four weeks, which is sixteen visits, though only fifteen different sites exist, because Site 1 accounts for two of those visits.
Answer: A technician cannot determine what to do instead, since the sentence prohibits an action without naming the required one. It would need to state the correct position, such as keeping the cooler upright and secured, and ideally the reason, which is that a bottle on its side can leak or lose its air space.
Answer: Any revision that separates the actions and names each object clearly, such as: "Remove any aerator, hose, or other attachment from the spout. Wipe the outside of the spout with a clean cloth. Open the tap fully and let the water run for five minutes before proceeding." The explanation should note that the original leaves "any attachment" undefined and leaves the reader to guess what is wiped and what runs.
Answer: The ordering protects the sample from contamination and protects the record from error. Measuring first keeps the sterile bottle sealed until the moment of filling, and recording after capping keeps the technician's hands and attention away from the open bottle. A different order, such as opening the bottle before running the chlorine test, would leave the sterile interior exposed while the test is performed, and recording before capping would invite a technician to write down a time that does not match the actual collection.
Answer: Any accurate paragraph in the student's own words covering three things: checking the cooler for unopened sterile bottles, an ice pack, the field sheet, and a calibrated chlorine kit before leaving; choosing a cold-water tap connected directly to the main, with no aerator, hose, softener, or swivel spout; and, if the residual is under 0.2 milligrams per liter, flushing five more minutes, re-measuring, then collecting anyway while recording both readings and telling the shift supervisor that day. Deduct for copied sentences or for omitting the supervisor notification.
Differentiation
Support
Give these students the procedure with the conditional sentences in step five boxed, and provide a numbered flow chart of steps one through nine as a reference during items 3 through 8. Reduce the assessment to items 1 through 9 and item 12, scored out of 39 points. Allow item 12 to be written as five separate sentences rather than as a paragraph.
Extension
Ask these students to write the field sheet the procedure refers to, designing the fields and their order so that a technician fills them in the order the procedure produces them. They should then write three sentences explaining which design decisions came from the procedure's sequence and which came from their own judgment about the fictional plant's technicians.
ELL supports
Pre-teach residual, aseptic, flush, and rotation with a labeled drawing of a tap, a bottle, and a cooler, and post the four terms with one-line definitions during the assessment. Allow a bilingual glossary for general-academic words such as confirm, reduce, and deliver. Permit items 3, 4, and 7 to be answered in a numbered list rather than in sentences, and allow item 12 to be drafted orally with the teacher before writing.