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Quiz & test questions Grade 9 English Language Arts

Taste and Odor at Stannage Reservoir: A Grade 9 ELA Quiz

A 30-point grade 9 ELA quiz on a fictional utility notice and a resident's letter, testing central idea, word choice, quotation punctuation, and explanatory writing.

Objectives

  1. Students will determine the central idea and purpose of two texts written about the same event for different audiences.
  2. Students will analyze how word choice shapes a reader's impression of a public notice.
  3. Students will write an explanatory paragraph that draws accurately on both texts.

Vocabulary

Key words: central idea, purpose, connotation, attribution, tone

Teacher overview

This quiz is worth 30 points and takes about 40 minutes. Students read two short texts about the same event, a utility notice and a resident's letter to a newspaper, and answer four multiple-choice items, five short-answer items, two quotation-editing items, and one constructed response worth six points. The texts are built so that both writers are accurate and neither is dishonest, which requires students to explain differences in purpose and word choice rather than look for a dishonest writer. Teachers can use it as a mid-unit check on reading two accounts of one event.

Taste and Odor at Stannage Reservoir: A Grade 9 ELA Quiz — Grade 9 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Assessment

Read both texts. The reservoir, the water district, and the writers below are fictional and were created for this quiz.

Text 1. Verrow Water District, Notice to Customers, posted online and mailed.

Some customers have reported an earthy or musty taste and smell in their tap water over the past week. The district has traced it to Stannage Reservoir, our source of supply. Warm weather has produced a bloom of algae there, and certain algae release two compounds that people can taste and smell at extremely low concentrations, sometimes only a few parts per trillion. These compounds are not harmful to drink. All required health tests during this period have met state and federal standards, and the district is publishing the daily results on its website. Our operators are treating the water with powdered activated carbon, which the compounds stick to so that filtration can remove them. The taste should ease within two weeks as the treatment takes effect and the bloom declines. Customers who find the taste unpleasant may refrigerate tap water in a covered pitcher, which reduces the odor. We regret the inconvenience.

Text 2. Letter to the editor of the Verrow Standard, from resident Adaeze Cobb.

I have lived in this town for nineteen years and I have never had to explain to my mother why the water smells like a basement. The district's notice tells us the water is safe. I am prepared to believe that. What the notice does not tell us is why nobody warned us before the taste arrived, or how a reservoir gets a bloom big enough to reach every tap in town. Two weeks is not a short time when you are pouring it into a glass. The notice says we may refrigerate our water in a covered pitcher, as though a pitcher were an answer to the question we are asking. I want to know what the district plans to do about the reservoir itself, and I want to know before next summer. Being safe and being acceptable are not the same standard, and the district should stop treating them as if they were.

Items

  1. (2 points) Which sentence best states the central idea of Text 1? (a) The district has stopped testing the water during the bloom. (b) An algae bloom is causing a taste and odor that is unpleasant but not harmful, and the district is treating it. (c) Customers should stop drinking tap water until the bloom ends. (d) Warm weather has damaged the treatment plant.
  2. (2 points) What is the main purpose of Text 2? (a) To report the results of the district's water tests. (b) To explain how powdered activated carbon works. (c) To press the district to address the reservoir and to communicate sooner. (d) To announce that the water is unsafe.
  3. (2 points) In Text 1, the word "musty" most nearly means (a) poisonous, (b) stale and earthy, (c) salty, (d) cloudy.
  4. (2 points) Which statement from Text 2 is a claim rather than a verifiable fact? (a) "I have lived in this town for nineteen years." (b) "The district's notice tells us the water is safe." (c) "Being safe and being acceptable are not the same standard." (d) "The notice says we may refrigerate our water in a covered pitcher."
  5. (2 points) Cobb asks how a reservoir gets a bloom that reaches every tap in town. Quote or paraphrase one detail from Text 1 that partly answers her, and state what it explains.
  6. (2 points) Describe the difference in tone between the two texts in one sentence, and name one word from each text that produces that tone.
  7. (2 points) Text 1 ends with the sentence "We regret the inconvenience." Explain what the word choice suggests about how the district views the problem, and what a resident might object to in that phrasing.
  8. (2 points) Rewrite this sentence so the quotation is correctly integrated and punctuated: Cobb wrote that the notice tells us the water is safe "I am prepared to believe that".
  9. (2 points) Rewrite this sentence so the quotation carries a signal phrase and correct punctuation: "These compounds are not harmful to drink." This is the district's main assurance.
  10. (3 points) Both writers are accurate, yet they leave different impressions. Explain how their different purposes account for that difference, using one detail from each text.
  11. (3 points) Identify one question Cobb raises that Text 1 does not answer, and explain why a reader might reasonably expect the notice to answer it.
  12. (6 points) Write an explanatory paragraph of six to eight sentences for a neighbor who has read neither text. Explain what is happening to the water, why the district says it is safe, and what Cobb is asking for. Use at least one detail from each text and attribute each one.

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: b. The notice's central idea is that an algae bloom is producing a harmless taste and odor that the district is treating. Choices a, c, and d contradict the notice, which reports continued testing and continued safe water.
  2. Answer: c. Cobb accepts the safety claim and presses for earlier notice and a plan for the reservoir itself, which is the purpose the letter returns to at the end.
  3. Answer: b. The surrounding sentence pairs "earthy" with "musty" and connects both to compounds people can taste and smell, so the meaning is stale and earthy rather than poisonous or cloudy.
  4. Answer: c. The statement that being safe and being acceptable are not the same standard is a judgment about how to weigh the situation. The other three statements report checkable facts about the notice or the writer.
  5. Answer: Accept any use of the detail that warm weather produced an algae bloom in Stannage Reservoir, which is the district's single source of supply. Because every customer's water comes from that one reservoir, a bloom there reaches every tap.
  6. Answer: Accept any answer naming the notice as measured or reassuring and the letter as frustrated or insistent. Supporting words include "regret" or "required" from Text 1 and "basement" or "stop" from Text 2.
  7. Answer: The phrase treats the problem as a minor disruption rather than a failure, which keeps the notice calm. A resident may object because the word inconvenience does not acknowledge two weeks of unpleasant water or the lack of advance warning.
  8. Answer: Cobb wrote that the notice tells residents the water is safe, and she added, "I am prepared to believe that." Accept any version that separates the paraphrase from the quotation, adds a signal phrase, and places the period inside the quotation mark.
  9. Answer: The district assured customers that "these compounds are not harmful to drink." Accept any version with a signal phrase, correct comma or that construction, and the period inside the closing quotation mark.
  10. Answer: Accept any answer explaining that the notice's purpose is to inform and reassure, so it emphasizes test results and treatment, while the letter's purpose is to press for change, so it emphasizes what the notice left out. Details may include the published daily results from Text 1 and the demand for a plan before next summer from Text 2.
  11. Answer: Accept either unanswered question: why customers were not warned before the taste arrived, or what the district will do about the reservoir itself. A reader may reasonably expect an answer because the notice claims to explain the situation, and both questions concern the district's own decisions rather than outside events.
  12. Answer: Accept any paragraph of six to eight sentences that names the algae bloom in Stannage Reservoir as the cause, reports the district's position that the compounds are not harmful and that required tests have met standards, and states Cobb's request for earlier notice and a plan for the reservoir. Full credit requires at least one attributed detail from each text, accurate wording, and no invented facts.

Differentiation

Support

Provide the two texts with the central idea sentence of each already underlined, and offer items 10 and 11 as a choice from three prepared statements that the student must then explain. Allow item 12 to be completed with a three-sentence frame naming cause, safety claim, and request.

Extension

Ask students to write the two-sentence follow-up notice the district should post next week, then to explain which of Cobb's objections that notice answers and which it leaves open. The follow-up must not promise anything Text 1 does not support.

ELL supports

Pre-teach central idea, purpose, connotation, attribution, and tone with one example each, and provide a glossary for musty, bloom, and inconvenience. Allow oral responses for items 6 and 7, and give a word bank of tone adjectives for item 6, such as calm, formal, frustrated, and urgent.

Extensions

Have students compare their item 12 paragraphs in pairs and mark every sentence that could be traced to one of the two texts. Any sentence that cannot be traced becomes a discussion point about where invented detail slips into summary writing.