11-12.RL.1

Description: Analyze what the text says explicitly as well as inferentially, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain; cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis. Identify areas where the text leaves ideas unclear or unexplored.
Maps to Reading Plus skills: 1B, 4C, 9B

Exemplars

1B: Analyzing Implicit Details

1B: Analyzing Implicit Details

Description: Drawing Conclusions, Making Inferences from information in text

SeeReader
✓ standard met

Selection: K-6

K-6

Grade level: 11
Word count: 2418 words
Author: Diane Lang
Synopsis: After a serious football injury, Sam gets a highly trained monkey that not only assists him physically but helps him emotionally.
Excerpt: Quitting her job to become his full-time caregiver, Mrs. Hayward erected a shrine to Sam in the living room, decorating the fireplace mantel and nearby shelves with his football and soccer trophies.

She tirelessly prepared his favorite meals, but nothing could alleviate Sam's dark moods as the family almost drained its finances to bring in physical therapists to rehabilitate Sam. Because he had lost all hope, his improvement was slow.

Question: Why did Sam's mom display his trophies in the living room?
  1. to demonstrate he had the ability to show determination and courage
  2. to remind him that he can rejoin his teams when he gets better
  3. to show visitors that he had been a star athlete before his injury
  4. to motivate him to do the same vigorous exercises he once did

Writing
✓ standard met

Writing prompt: Describe how you arrived at conclusions about a selection's main idea and characters if information about these text elements was not directly stated.

Evaluator

Organization: Certica Solutions

4C: Visualizing

4C: Visualizing

Description: Visualizing

SeeReader
✓ standard met

Selection: K-31

K-31

Grade level: 11
Word count: 2673 words
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Synopsis: Life is altered forever when Pandora opens a mysterious box.
Excerpt: Epimetheus watched her. If he had cried out, Pandora would probably have withdrawn her hand, and the fatal mystery of the box might never have been revealed. But Epimetheus himself, although he would not admit it aloud, had his own share of curiosity to know what was inside. Perceiving that Pandora was resolved to find out the abstract secret, he determined that his friend should not be the only wise person in the cottage. If there were anything pretty, valuable, or remarkable in the box, he meant to take half of it to himself.

Question: Read this excerpt. What kind of expression could you expect to see on Epimetheus' face?
  1. fixed
  2. agitated
  3. grim
  4. pitying

Writing
✓ standard met

Writing prompt: Explain how and why visions or pictures of a character, setting, or event develop and change with the introduction of new information. Use details from a selection you have read to illustrate and support your explanation.

Evaluator

Organization: Certica Solutions

9B: Classifying

9B: Classifying

Description: Classify

SeeReader
✓ standard met

Selection: K-23

K-23

Grade level: 11
Word count: 2412 words
Author: Anton Chekhov
Synopsis: A wager between a banker and a lawyer yields an unexpected result.
Excerpt: During the first year of solitary imprisonment, the lawyer, judging from his frantic short notes, suffered terribly from loneliness and boredom; from his cell day and night came the sound of the piano. He was sent books of whimsical character: novels with complicated yet preposterous love interests, stories of crime and fantasy, comedies, and so on.

In the second half of the sixth year, the prisoner began zealously to study languages, philosophy, and history; in the space of four years about six hundred volumes were purchased at his request.

Later, after the tenth year, the lawyer sat immovable before his table and read only the New Testament; the banker found it peculiar that a man who in four years had mastered six hundred erudite volumes should have spent nearly a year examining one book, easy to understand and by no means thick. The New Testament was then replaced by the history of religions and theology.

During the final two years of his solitary confinement the prisoner read an extraordinary amount, quite haphazardly: he would apply himself to the natural sciences, then he would devote himself wholeheartedly to Byron or Shakespeare. Notes came from him requesting, simultaneously, books on chemistry, a textbook of medicine, a novel, and some treatise on philosophy or theology -- he read as though he were swimming in the sea among broken fragments of shattered wreckage, and in his desperate desire to survive was eagerly grasping one piece after another.

Question: Based on these excerpts, which two statements best describe the significance of books in this selection?
  1. At the beginning they represent entertainment and study.
  2. At the end they symbolize a descent into madness.
  3. At first they represent man's superior knowledge.
  4. At the end they represent man's foolishness.
  5. From start to finish they represent the knowledge of human history.

Writing
✓ standard met

Writing prompt: Classify the kinds of characters in a fictional narrative selection (narrator, protagonist, antagonist, anti-hero, foil, symbolic, etc.) and describe their functions. Use details from a selection you have read to illustrate and explain your classifications.

Evaluator

Organization: Certica Solutions