Q3 IA Annotated

English Language Arts Grade 7 Quarter 3 Interim Assessment

Student Name

The 3rd Quarter Interim Assessment was taken by all 7th grade students on Tuesday, March 5, 2019. Students were given 60 minutes to complete the exam.

Advisory

Directions: Read the passage and answer the questions that follow.

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6% 88% 5% 1%

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Correct: D,F – 38% Distractors: E,F B,F 3 88% 5% 3% 4%

4 60% 7% 30% 2%

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4% 12% 66% 17%

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How does paragraph 14 contribute to plot?

16% A. The dragons are suffering alongside the people and decide they must act to save their community and themselves.

72% B. The dragons are frustrated by the Jade Emperor’s inaction, so they are forced to solve the problem themselves.

2% C. The dragons decide to assist the Jade Emperor because they know he is busy taking care of the issues of the world.

9% D. The dragons are saddened by the suffering of the people but feel they cannot assist them without the Jade Emperor’s support.

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What do the dragons’ actions reveal about their character?

4% 84% 6% 6%

A. The dragons’ decision to obey the Jade Emperor reveals their respectful nature.

B. The dragons’ decision to devise a plan to help the people reveals their kindheartedness.

C. The dragons’ decision to continue to ask the Jade Emperor for assistance reveals their persistence.

D. The dragons’ decision to seek help from sea god reveals their relentlessness.

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In what two ways is the setting of the “Four Dragons” important to its plot? Select two answer choices.

A. Because crops are not growing due to lack of rain, the people are forced to eat bark, grass, and white clay.

B. Because they know the dragons live nearby, the people beg them for assistance.

C. Because of the dry winds, the people plead with the Jade Emperor to give them rain.

D. Because of the close proximity to the sea, the dragons decide to use the seawater to bring rain to the people.

E. Because they know the rainy season will come, the people remain patient as they hope for rain.

Correct: A,D – 64% Distractors: A,C – 8% A,E – 4%

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Directions: Read the passage and answer the questions that follow.

Eyes on the Sky

by Charlene Brusso

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For thousands of years people looked up at the night sky and wondered about the lights they saw there. Were they tiny fires?

Holes in the sky? If only we could see them better!

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The quest to see better started long before the first telescope looked at the stars. Simple magnifying lenses made of clear rock or glass have been around since ancient times. In the Middle Ages, monks used half-circles of glass or crystal—reading stones—to help them read books and scrolls. By the 1500s, craftsmen were setting lenses in wire frames to make eyeglasses. Then, in 1608, a Dutch glasses maker named Hans Lippershey advertised a new device for “seeing faraway things as though nearby.” It was a long tube that held two lenses so you could look through both at once: a simple telescope. Many other glasses makers seem to have had the same idea around this time, so it’s hard to say who came up with it first.

What Galileo Saw 3

News of Lippershey’s far-seeing tube spread quickly across Europe. In Italy, an astronomer named Galileo Galilei heard about it and soon built his own seeing tube with lenses he made himself.

He put one lens at the front of the tube, to gather a lot of light and focus it at the back, and another at the back end to straighten out and magnify the image. Galileo called his tube a “telescope,” from the Greek words tele, “far,” and skopein, “to see.” With his notebook and pen in hand, Galileo pointed his telescope to the heavens and sketched what he saw there—amazing sights! When Galileo looked at the moon, he saw plains, valleys, and mountain ranges instead of a smooth surface. He discovered that the planet Venus has phases, just like our moon. Most surprising of all, he saw four moons circling the planet Jupiter. After Galileo published his observations, everyone else wanted a telescope too. Galileo’s telescope could see things about 30 times better than the human eye. This was great for looking at nearby objects like the moon, but astronomers were also curious about the planets and stars, so they set out to make even better telescopes.

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Bigger and a Little Better 4

One problem with Galileo’s telescope was that it could only see a small part of the sky, like the view through a drinking straw.

The glass lenses also split light like a prism, giving stars colored halos. In 1611 the German astronomer Johannes Kepler suggested that putting a convex (instead of a concave) lens at the eyepiece and using a longer tube would give a sharper picture and a bigger view of the sky. Kepler never built a telescope himself, but others soon put his ideas to work. He was right—his new design was a big improvement. Soon the race was on to build longer and longer telescopes. By the 1670s, astronomers were making telescopes 150 feet (46 meters) long (that’s the length of four school buses), with lots of lenses to try to improve the picture. Telescopes were still skinny, because good glass lenses could not be made very large. Some astronomers did away with the tube altogether. They hung the front lens on a tall pole and used long strings to line it up with the viewer’s eyepiece on the ground below. It worked (sort of), but there had to be a better way.

Seeing with Mirrors 5

Telescopes like Galileo’s, which gather light with lenses, are called refractors (refract means to bend light). But scientists had known for a long time that curved mirrors can also collect light.

In 1672 the English scientist Isaac Newton built a new kind of telescope that collected light with a curved mirror made of copper and tin instead of a big glass lens. A second, smaller mirror bounced the light to the eyepiece. Because Newton’s reflecting telescope used mirrors to “fold up” the light path, it didn’t need such a long tube. Newton’s telescope was revolutionary, but it wasn’t perfect. Good curved metal mirrors were much more difficult to make than lenses. And the metal tarnished and needed constant polishing, which could bend the mirror and spoil the telescope’s focus.

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New Telescopes, New Discoveries 6

Eventually, telescope makers combined the best of both designs, using curved mirrors to gather light and lenses to sharpen and magnify the image. And telescopes kept getting bigger.

Astronomers in the 1700s and 1800s, eager for new discoveries, often devoted their entire fortunes to making telescopes. They tried all sorts of new ideas for making better lenses and mirrors, and different ways of arranging them in the tube. And when they were done, they built ingenious scaffolds to hold their huge telescopes up. They looked up at the night sky, tracked the paths of comets, counted stars, and spied on the planets. It seemed like every new discovery raised new questions. With better telescopes, astronomers saw that many stars were oddly fuzzy and had funny shapes. They called them nebulae, or “clouded.” What were they, and why were there so many different shapes? No one knew. Two of the most energetic astronomers of this time were England’s William Herschel and his sister Caroline. William Herschel built more than 400 telescopes over his lifetime, making the lenses and mirrors himself. With one of these he discovered the planet Uranus in 1781, the first new planet to be found with a telescope. The Herschels together counted more than 2,000 new nebulae. They realized that many of the nebulae were not clouds, but clusters of many stars. They even wondered whether the Milky Way, the thick band of stars across the sky, might be such a group, to which our own sun belonged. (Today we know that our sun is indeed a part of the star group we call the Milky Way galaxy.) ◆ ◆ ◆

Charlene Brusso, “Eyes on the Sky,” ASK 9, no. 2 (February 2010).

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Correct: A,E – 27% Distractors: A,B – 2% A,C – 5% A,D – 4%

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11% 50% 27% 9%

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Select two answer choices.

Correct: A,B – 49% Distractors: A,C – 6% A,D – 3% A,E – 5% 15 Which statement describes the relationship among Hans Lippershey, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, and William Herschel?

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A. They collaborated as a team to develop the technology needed to build a telescope.

B. They were in competition to build the best telescope.

C. Each is known for contributing to telescope design.

D. Each invented a completely unique device.

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16 How do Lippershey’s actions influence the events in the section entitled “New Telescopes, New Discoveries”?

19%

A. Lippershey’s original design for a telescope was never altered and has led to many great discoveries about comets, stars, and planets.

56% B. After Lippershey’s original model, people continued to improve telescope technologies and design.

7% C. Lippershey is the most significant inventor in the development of an advanced telescope design.

15% D. Lippershey worked hard to educate others on the design of his telescope leading to many great discoveries.

17 Which best describes the author’s perspective on Kepler?

A. The author is critical of Kepler because he never actually built a telescope.

10% B. The author admires Kepler for building a telescope that offered a sharper picture.

14% 69% C. The author recognizes Kepler’s contributions to an improved telescope design.

4% D. The author dismisses Kepler’s accomplishments in favor of more successful inventors of the time.

18 According to the passage, which group of people benefitted most from the invention of the telescope?

A. Pilots benefitted most from the invention of the telescope because they were able to better view 7% of the sky.

7% B. Sailors benefitted most from the invention of the telescope because it allowed them to navigate in seas more efficiently.

C. Glasses makers benefitted most from the invention of the telescope because it allowed them to 14% learn which combination of lenses would offer the clearest vision.

69% D. Astronomers benefitted most from the invention of the telescope because it allowed astronomers to see comets, stars, and planets more clearly.

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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.

Naturally Selected to Survive The earth has changed throughout the course of its history. Some of these changes have happened quickly.

Others have occurred over long stretches of time. For example the planet has experienced ice ages that took place over thousands of years. During those eras, huge sheets of ice covered much of the surface of the globe.

Then for a few thousand years between the ice ages, the earth warmed up. Scientists believe that this cycle has actually occurred a few times.

As the planet goes through this cycle, environments may go through changes. In order to survive in changing environments species oftentimes must undergo a process of adaptation. Adaptation refers to a mutation or genetic change that enables an organism such as an animal or plant to survive in its environment. This trait is passed down from one generation to the next, becoming an inherited trait of the species. A species may have to adapt to warmer temperatures increased precipitation or even developing air pollution. If the organisms of a species cannot change along with the area in which they live, they risk dying out. Though an uncountable number of species that have roamed the earth has become extinct, the planet has seen many others adapt as well. These select organisms have been able to go on living in their environment.

A species adapts to a changing environment as organisms with favorable traits reproduce and survive. These favorable traits which help the species survive, are passed down through different generations of the species.

This process is called: “natural selection.� Recent history has given us an important example of how organisms are able to survive once their environments change.

19. Replace For example the planet with

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A. For example the planet B. For example; the planet C. For example: the planet D. For example, the planet

20. Replace In order to survive in changing environments species oftentimes must undergo a process of adaptation. with

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A. In order to survive in changing environments species oftentimes must undergo a process of adaptation.

B. In order to survive, in changing environments, species oftentimes must undergo a process of adaptation.

C. In order to survive in changing environments, species oftentimes must undergo a process of adaptation.

D. In order to survive in changing environments species oftentimes, must undergo a process of adaptation.

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21. Replace A species may have to adapt to warmer temperatures increased precipitation or even developing air pollution. with

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A. A species may have to adapt to warmer temperatures increased precipitation or even developing air pollution.

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B. A species may have to adapt to warmer temperatures, increased precipitation or even developing air pollution.

45% C. A species may have to adapt to warmer temperatures, increased precipitation, or even developing air pollution.

36% D. A species may have to adapt to: warmer temperatures, increased precipitation, or even developing air pollution.

22. Replace has become with

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A. has become B. have become C. was becoming D. becoming

23. Replace traits which help the species survive, are with

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A. traits which help the species survive, are B. traits which help the species survive are C. traits, which help the species survive, are D. traits, which help the species survive are

24. Replace called: “natural selection.” with

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A. called: “natural selection.”

B. called “natural selection.”

C. called; natural selection.

D. called, natural selection.

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