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Worksheet Grade 9 English Language Arts

Quoting the Kettlemoor Snow Survey: A Grade 9 Quotation Worksheet

A grade 9 ELA worksheet on integrating and punctuating quotations, using a fictional interview with a snow survey hydrologist about a basin's water supply.

Objectives

  1. Students will punctuate embedded quotations correctly, including signal phrases, commas, and end marks.
  2. Students will decide when to quote a source directly and when to paraphrase it.
  3. Students will use brackets without changing a speaker's meaning.

Vocabulary

Snowpack
The snow that piles up in the mountains over the winter. As it melts in spring and summer, it acts like a giant water tank feeding rivers and reservoirs.

Also: signal phrase, paraphrase, brackets

Teacher overview

Recognizing a quotation is easier than integrating one, and a quotation dropped into a paragraph without a signal phrase, a comma, or a clear speaker is the most common problem in ninth-grade work with sources. This worksheet gives students a single interview to work from, so every item practices the same skill on the same material rather than on twelve unrelated sentences. The interview is fictional, and the subject is a snow survey, the yearly measurement that tells a basin how much water its snowpack is holding. Items 11 and 12 move from correcting to composing and explaining, so students apply the punctuation rules in their own sentences rather than in someone else's.

Quoting the Kettlemoor Snow Survey: A Grade 9 Quotation Worksheet — Grade 9 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

The interview below is fictional and was written for this worksheet. The speaker is Renata Ospina, an invented hydrologist for the Kettlemoor Basin water forecast office.

Interview transcript, recorded at the Pike Saddle snow course.

Reporter: What are you actually measuring out here?

Ospina: We push a hollow tube down through the snow to the ground, then weigh the core. Depth alone tells you almost nothing, because old snow is dense and new snow is fluffy. What we want is the snow water equivalent, which is the depth of water you would have if that core melted right now.

Reporter: And what did you find this year?

Ospina: The snow water equivalent at this site is about 18 inches, which comes to roughly 62 percent of the ten-year average for the first week of April. The snowpack is our largest reservoir, and this year it is holding less than it usually does.

Reporter: Does that mean a shortage?

Ospina: It means a smaller and earlier runoff. The reservoirs downstream can carry the basin through a single dry year. Two in a row is the situation nobody plans for well, and I would rather the towns hear that now than in July.

For items 1 through 4, rewrite each sentence so that the quotation is embedded and punctuated correctly. Keep the speaker's words exactly as recorded.

  1. Ospina said "we push a hollow tube down through the snow to the ground, then weigh the core".
  2. According to Ospina the snowpack is our largest reservoir.
  3. Ospina explained that snow depth alone "tells you almost nothing", she said density is the reason.
  4. "Two in a row is the situation nobody plans for well" this is what worries the forecast office.

Answer items 5 through 12 in complete sentences.

  1. One of the two passages below should be quoted directly and the other should be paraphrased. Choose, and explain your choice in one sentence. Passage A: "What we want is the snow water equivalent, which is the depth of water you would have if that core melted right now." Passage B: "The snow water equivalent at this site is about 18 inches."
  2. A student writes: Ospina said the snowpack "is holding less" and that towns should hear about it. Explain what information the quotation leaves out, and rewrite the sentence so the quotation carries the missing detail.
  3. A student writes: The survey found a thin year. "The reservoirs downstream can carry the basin through a single dry year." Explain why the second sentence is a dropped quotation, then rewrite the pair as one sentence with a signal phrase.
  4. Rewrite this sentence using a more precise signal verb than said, chosen from noted, cautioned, or estimated: Ospina said that two dry years in a row is "the situation nobody plans for well."
  5. Correct the punctuation in this sentence and explain the rule you applied: The reporter asked, "does that mean a shortage"?
  6. Rewrite the following so that a bracketed change makes the pronoun clear: Ospina said, "it is holding less than it usually does."
  7. Write two sentences of your own about the Kettlemoor snow survey. Include one short quotation of eight words or fewer from the transcript, with a signal phrase and correct punctuation.
  8. Explain in two or three sentences when a writer should paraphrase a source instead of quoting it directly.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: Ospina said, "We push a hollow tube down through the snow to the ground, then weigh the core." A comma follows the signal phrase, the quotation opens with a capital letter, and the period sits inside the closing quotation mark.
  2. Answer: According to Ospina, "The snowpack is our largest reservoir." The attribution needs a comma, and the borrowed words need quotation marks so readers know whose claim it is.
  3. Answer: Ospina explained that snow depth alone "tells you almost nothing," because older snow is denser than fresh snow. The comma splice is repaired, and the comma moves inside the quotation mark.
  4. Answer: Ospina warned that "two in a row is the situation nobody plans for well," a prospect that worries the forecast office. Any correct version must attach the quotation to a signal phrase rather than leaving it standing alone.
  5. Answer: Passage A should be quoted and Passage B should be paraphrased. Passage A defines a term in the speaker's own careful wording, while Passage B is a plain measurement that a writer can restate without losing anything.
  6. Answer: The quotation stops before "than it usually does," so it leaves out what the snowpack is holding less than and how much less. A corrected version reads: Ospina said the snowpack "is holding less than it usually does," at roughly 62 percent of the ten-year average for early April.
  7. Answer: It is a dropped quotation because it stands as its own sentence with no signal phrase, so the reader cannot tell who is speaking. A corrected version reads: Although the survey found a thin year, Ospina noted that "the reservoirs downstream can carry the basin through a single dry year."
  8. Answer: Ospina cautioned that two dry years in a row is "the situation nobody plans for well." Cautioned fits because the speaker is warning about a risk rather than reporting a measurement or making an estimate.
  9. Answer: The reporter asked, "Does that mean a shortage?" The question mark belongs inside the quotation marks because the quoted words are themselves the question, and the quotation begins with a capital letter.
  10. Answer: Ospina said, "[The snowpack] is holding less than it usually does." Brackets show that the writer replaced the unclear pronoun, and the rest of the wording is unchanged.
  11. Answer: Accept any two sentences that quote eight words or fewer accurately, attach a signal phrase, and punctuate correctly. A model response reads: Crews at Pike Saddle weigh a snow core rather than measuring depth alone. Ospina explained that depth "tells you almost nothing" without the weight behind it.
  12. Answer: Accept any answer explaining that a writer paraphrases when the information matters more than the wording, when the original is long or technical, or when a plain restatement serves the reader better, and that a paraphrase still requires attribution.

Differentiation

Support

Provide items 1 through 4 with the correct punctuation marks printed in a bank above the exercise, so students insert marks rather than reconstructing the sentences from memory. Give a two-line reminder card showing one correct model with the comma and the period labeled.

Extension

Have students find a place in the transcript where the speaker's meaning would change if a writer quoted only part of a sentence, then write both the misleading version and an honest version and explain the difference between them.

ELL supports

Pre-teach signal phrase, paraphrase, brackets, and snowpack with a labeled example sentence for each. Provide a signal verb bank with a short definition beside every verb, such as noted, cautioned, estimated, and explained, and allow oral rehearsal of item 11 before writing.

Extensions

Ask students to record a two-minute interview with a classmate about any school topic, then write one paragraph that quotes the classmate twice and paraphrases once. Partners check each other's punctuation against the models in this worksheet.