Q2 IA Annotated

English Language Arts Grade 7 Quarter 2 Interim Assessment

Student Name

The 2nd Quarter Interim Assessment was taken by all 7th grade students on Wednesday, December 12, 2018. Students were given 60 minutes to complete the exam.

Advisory

Read the passage and answer the questions that follow.

Excerpt from Windblowne

by Stephen Messer

Oliver lives in the town of Windblowne, where the biggest event of the year, the kite-flying festival, is only a few days away.

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When Oliver woke, his bedroom was still dark. Normally he left his heavy curtains open so that the morning sunlight would wake him. Last night he had left them closed, and now his room was cheerless and dim. He sat up, blinking, wondering how late it was.

It had been nearly sunrise when he had finally gone to bed.

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He had spent hours eliminating everything from his room that reminded him of his failures. Gone from the walls were the paintings of kites. The racks for kitesmithing supplies were bare, and the chest that normally held reels and twine stood empty.

Nothing lay on the workbench except a book titled Careers in Mining, which sat open to page one. Last night, he had resolved to stay up and read as much of it as he possibly could. Today, he resolved to read page two.

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Even his not-so-secret drawer had been yanked open and emptied. He had tried to build it in the side of his workbench, as a place to hold his most treasured possessions, but since he was as skilled in carpentry as he was in kitesmithing, the drawer was crude and obvious and terribly unsecret. Anyway, it had held only kite supplies, and was empty now, so he didn’t care if it was secret or not.

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He dressed slowly. With no kite, he had no reason to wear his flying clothes, and so he dressed only in a simple tunic, jacket, and trousers. In his closet he found his fur-lined boots, which he promptly kicked under the bed, where they joined the rest of his crumpled flying outfit. He peered around the room for something else to kick, but there wasn’t much left. He wondered if a tourist had come across the bundle of kiting gear lying beside the Way. Maybe they’d be able to make something useful out of Oliver’s things. Oliver certainly hadn’t.

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Downstairs, his parents were sitting at the breakfast table. His mother was wearing her dusty smock and wolfing down cold meat and berry juice while waving her knife in the air and talking to his father. Oliver saw that no fire had been made in the stove, so he began to build one.

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“This sculpture will be the best yet in the Anguish series,” his mother said excitedly, stabbing the air with her fork. “It represents my finest achievement in anguish!”

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“Yes, dear,” his father said remotely, in much the same tone as he had asked Oliver for tea. His pen did not hesitate as it flew across the pages. He was still dressed in his nightclothes and had nothing before him but his papers and an untouched glass of juice.

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“I mean it,” she continued. “We’ve got tourists coming from all over for that thing. The Festival, I mean. Some of them will be the sort who can appreciate art, unlike that fool mayor!”

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“Yes, dear.”

“When they see Anguish Number Seven out there projecting despair, they’ll forget all about those frivolous kites and start focusing on the world around them! There’s another leaf death in progress, just like six years ago. Something must be done!”

She thumped the table. Dust rose from her smock and hung, undecided, in the air.

“Yes, dear.” The pen scratched away.

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They continued in this fashion as Oliver coaxed the fire to life.

He wondered if his mother would be having this conversation with thin air if he and his father walked out of the room, and decided that she probably would. When the flames were leaping in the stove, Oliver began to fry bacon. The smell filled the kitchen.

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His father sniffed and raised his head, his pen finally stopping.

“Say, that smells good. Hullo, Oliver!”

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“Good morning,” Oliver replied, concentrating on his bacon. He added eggs to the skillet, and more bacon for his father.

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His mother gulped down her juice and stood abruptly, yanking on a hat. “Yes, good morning, dear. If anyone needs anything, I’ll be busy in my workshop! No time to dawdle!” She grabbed Oliver and gave him a fierce kiss on the top of his head; then out the door she went. Oliver knew she wouldn’t be back until dark.

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His father was looking around the kitchen as though seeing it for the first time. “Ah yes, the Festival,” he said. “I suppose it is about that time, isn’t it? I’d forgotten!”

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Oliver brought their breakfasts to the table and began to eat.

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His father’s wandering gaze settled on Oliver. “So,” he said.

“Are you flying a kite in the Festival, lad?”

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Surprised, Oliver paused with a forkful of food halfway to his mouth. He shook his head.

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“Why not?” said his father. “You like kites, don’t you?”

Oliver hardly knew what to say. He had not thought it possible, but his father had reached a new low point in his sad history of oblivion. Oliver waited for him to go back to his writing. But the man kept staring at him, a vaguely puzzled expression on his face. He had actually put down his pen, although his hand was still resting on it. It occurred to Oliver that his father must be waiting for an answer, so he said, “I don’t have a kite.” Oliver assumed this would bring the conversation to an end.

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“Oh,” his father said brightly. “You should make one!”

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Oliver stared at his plate. “Thanks. I’ll think about it.”

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Now his father was musing aloud, tapping his pen on his paper.

“You know who could help you make a kite?” he said.

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“No,” said Oliver, hoping desperately that his father wasn’t about to offer.

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“Your mother’s uncle. Your great-uncle, I suppose. Name of Gilbert. I seem to recall he was a champion kitesmith, decades ago. Still lives in Windblowne somewhere, if I recall.” His voice trailed off and he glanced back at his papers.

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Oliver stared at his father, astonished. The fact that he had a relative who lived in Windblowne and was a former champion kitesmith, and that his parents had never bothered to mention it to him, was almost beyond belief. ◆ ◆ ◆

Stephen Messer, Windblowne, Random House.

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What effect does paragraph 4 have on the meaning of the scene?

31% A. It shows Oliver’s struggle to find motivation to build a kite 12% B. It explains why Oliver was not able to participate in the kite-flying festival.

54% C. It shows Oliver’s disappointment in his kitemaking abilities.

3% D. It explains how Oliver’s anger prevented him from participating in the festival.

Read the sentence from paragraph 2.

He had spent hours eliminating everything from his room that reminded him of his failures.

What does the word “eliminating” mean as it is used in paragraph 2?

A. yanking B. opening C. removing D. holding

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Session 1 DIRECTIONS: Read the two passages and then answer the questions that follow.

Beam Me Up, Smell-ie!

by Faith Hickman Brynie

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Talk about instant travel in space and time! It seems that nothing can take you back to a memory faster than an odor. The experience is called the “Proust phenomenon.” It’s named for a French novelist who described a flood of childhood memories that came back to him after he smelled pastry dipped in linden tea.

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It’s hard to argue with Proust’s idea. In our everyday experience, it seems that nothing jogs the memory better than a smell. To see if that’s so, Welsh researchers recruited volunteers who had visited the Jorvik Museum in York, England.

Museumgoers there experience not only the sights and sounds, but also the smells, of a Viking village recreated from a thousand years ago. The researchers gave people tests of facts about the museum, asking what they remembered about their visits several years before. Some of the test-takers filled out the questionnaires while smelling the Jorvik Museum’s unique mix of aromas. Others worked while smelling a different odor or none at all. The result?

People who smelled “Eau de Jorvik” got the highest scores on the test. This result is not, unfortunately, as much a proof of the Proust phenomenon as it is of a learning process called “contextdependent memory.” The same sights, sounds, and odors that are present when we learn something new help us to recall it later.

(Remember that when you are studying for a test!)

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To qualify as the Proust phenomenon, an odor-prompted memory should be old, vivid, and emotional. There’s evidence for all three. Simon Chu and John Downes at the University of Liverpool asked people in their late 60s and 70s to describe memories that came to mind when they heard a word or smelled an odor. Verbal cues most often produced memories from ages 11 to 25. Odor cues brought back older memories—things that happened when the respondents were ages 6 to 10. The same scientists prodded people’s recall with smells, pictures, and words.

Subjects rated their smell-cued memories as more emotional and richer in detail than the word- or picture-stimulated ones.

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Session 1 4

The big question, however, is whether odor is better than sight or sound at bringing back memories vividly. Rachel Herz, a psychologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, says that it isn’t. She showed people paintings and at the same time had them smell an odor or imagine one. A few days later, she exposed them to the odor or gave them a word describing the odor. Regardless of whether they had smelled the odor or just heard the word, people were no more accurate in remembering the painting. However, the emotional content of their memory— how the painting made them feel—was much stronger when the memory’s trigger was odor.

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“I believe that the Proust phenomenon can be subtly redefined,” Herz says. “Odors may trigger a memory of uncommon emotional power, it is true. But the vividness of memory—its sensation of accuracy—is an illusion created by that rush of emotion.” The architecture of the brain explains the Proust phenomenon, Herz thinks. Odors are processed and memories are retrieved (but not stored) in the brain’s right half. The brain’s center of emotion is also there. ◆ ◆ ◆

Q&A: How Can Our Noses Smell a Trillion Different Odor Mixtures?

by Jane J. Lee, National Geographic

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Our noses are better at distinguishing smells than we ever knew. A lot better.

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In fact, we may be able to detect as many as a trillion different odors, according to a new study published this week. That’s orders of magnitude more than earlier estimates of nasal intelligence.

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The study marks the first time that the human sense of smell has been put through a rigorous scientific test, says Leslie Vosshall, a researcher at Rockefeller University in New York City.

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A 1920s study concluded that people could smell roughly 10,000 different odors, but that estimate wasn’t backed by data, says Vosshall, co-author of the study published March 20 in the journal Science.

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Session 1 5

Still, that decades-old figure remained unchanged until now, likely giving rise to a scientific under-appreciation of our nose’s capabilities.

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National Geographic spoke via email to study co-author Andreas Keller, a researcher in Vosshall’s laboratory at Rockefeller University, about the new research, whether there’s a universal “good” smell, and if scientists might find evidence for “supersmellers.”

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When did this idea that humans have a poor sense of smell first pop up?

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I blame Plato, who wrote in Timaeus—[his account of the formation of the universe]—that vision is the greatest gift given to us by the gods and the basis of philosophy, whereas smell is a half-formed thing about which not much can be said.

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What about the idea that we can distinguish 10,000 odors? Where’d that come from?

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This number is based on theoretical work from the early 20th century. [It] was based on the assumptions that (a) there are four elementary odor qualities—fragrant, acidic, caproic [or sweaty], and burnt—and (b) that we can discriminate around ten different intensities of each of these qualities, 10x10x10x10=10,000.

Unfortunately, both assumptions were wrong.

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Did it surprise you to find that humans can smell a trillion odor mixtures?

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Not at all. From my experience working with odors, I knew that it is very unusual to find two mixtures of odors that cannot be discriminated. And because the number of possible mixtures is astronomically high, it always seemed to me that 10,000 was much too small a number. I suspect that most other people working with smells would have agreed with me.

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You tested whether people would be able to distinguish one mixture of odors from another. Is there a difference between being able to smell those mixtures as opposed to single odors?

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Session 1 14

There is a condition called specific anosmia, or odor-blindness, in which people with an otherwise OK sense of smell cannot perceive a specific type of odor, like musk. To them, some single odors that have a smell to others are odorless. For mixtures, one will not find this effect because even if people cannot smell some of the components in a mixture, they will be able to smell [the other odors].

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Is there a scent that’s universally considered a good smell? What about a universal bad one?

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I published a paper in which a few hundred people rated how much they liked around 60 different odors. I think vanillin was the favorite and isovaleric acid [a compound that gives smelly cheese its pungent odor] the least favorite.

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However, all the subjects were from the New York area, so that doesn’t count as universal. But from an evolutionary standpoint, fruit odor would be a good candidate for a universally pleasant odor and the odor of decaying flesh a good candidate for an unpleasant one.

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Are there “supersmellers,” just like there are supertasters—people with an extremely good ability to distinguish flavors?

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There probably are. There is enormous variability in an individual’s olfactory abilities. Much of it is probably due to genetic variability in the [odor] receptors.

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However, there are different ways to measure how good a person’s sense of smell is—sensitivity, the ability to discriminate similar smells, the ability to identify components in mixtures—and it is not clear which one would have to be unusual to qualify as a “supersmeller.”

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Where will our noses lead your research next?

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Session 1 22

Like many others in our field, I want to better understand what makes odors smell similar or different. So this is the question my research is now focusing on. I’m especially interested in pairs of mixtures that share none of their components, yet smell similar.

Magnetic resonance imaging of the brain (MRI). Olfaction, the sense of smell, occurs when chemical substances stimulate special nerves situated in the upper part of the nasal cavity.

◆ ◆ ◆ “Beam Me Up, Smell-ie!” by Faith Hickman Brynie, from Odyssey, Feb. 2003, Vol. 12, Issue 2. Copyright © 2003, Cricket Media. Used by permission.

Adapted text from “Q&A: How Can Our Noses Smell a Trillion Different Odor Mixtures?” by Jane J. Lee. National Geographic Website. Mar. 2014. <http://news. nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140321-nose-human-smell-odors-trillionscience.html> Photograph of “Study of Smell: MRI of the Brain.” (Image 824-33372). CAVALLINI JAMES / BSIP / SuperStock. Used by permission.

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Which of the following reflects a claim made by the author in “Beam Me Up, Smell-ie!”?

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There are six words or phrases in the passage that are underlined to show they may be incorrect. For each underlined word or phrase, mark the correct replacement in the answer document provided.

Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect Earth’s atmosphere works something like a giant glass greenhouse. As the sun’s rays enter our atmosphere, most continue right down to the planet’s surface. As it hits the soil and surface waters, those rays release much of their energy as heat, some of the heat then radiates back out into space.

However, certain gases in our atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor, work like a blanket to retain much of that heat. This helps to warm our atmosphere. The gases do this by absorbing the heat and radiate it back to Earth’s surface. These gases are nicknamed “greenhouse gases” because of their heat-trapping effect. Without the “greenhouse effect,” Earth would be too cold to support most forms of life.

Unfortunately, there can be too much of a good thing. Carbon dioxide is released when we use fossil fuels, such as coal oil and natural gas. We burn these fuels made from the ancient remains of plants and animals to run electricity-generating plants that power factories, homes and schools. Products of these fossil fuels, such as gasoline and diesel fuel, power most of the engines that drive cars, airplanes and ships.

17. Replace it hits with

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A. it hits B. they hit C. they hits D. it hit

18. Replace heat, some with

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A. heat, some B. heat some C. heat. Some D. heat (some

19. Replace atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor, with

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A. atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor, B. atmosphere such as carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor C. atmosphere such as carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor, D. atmosphere such as carbon dioxide methane, and water vapor

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20. Replace radiate it with

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A. radiate it B. radiating it C. radiates it D. radiated it

21. Replace coal oil and natural gas

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A. coal oil and natural gas B. coal, oil, and natural gas C. coal, oil; and natural gas D. coal: oil and natural gas

22. Replace fuels made from the ancient remains of plants and animals to run electricity-generating plants with

15 % 28 %

A. fuels made from the ancient remains of plants and animals to run electricity-generating plants B. fuels, made from the ancient remains of plants and animals, to run electricity-generating plants C. fuels made from the ancient remains of plants and animals, to run electricity-generating plants D. fuels, made from the ancient remains of plants and animals to run electricity-generating plants,

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