Free printable i-Ready practice test for Grade 8

Reading

Circle the letter of the best answer. No time limit.

1. 1.

   Her lucid essay laid out each step so plainly that even my little sister followed it.

   What does the word lucid mean in this sentence?

   1. Aclear and easy to understand
   2. Bvery long
   3. Cconfusing and messy
   4. Dvery funny

2. A Safer Crossing on Elm Street

   To the Editor:

   Every school morning, more than 300 students cross Elm Street at Fifth Avenue to reach Lincoln Middle School, and the only thing protecting us is a set of faded white stripes painted on the pavement. I am asking the city to add flashing warning lights and a crossing guard at that corner before someone gets hurt.

   The most serious problem is that drivers do not stop. Elm Street is wide and straight, and many drivers treat it like a highway, even though the speed limit near the school is 20 miles per hour. Last Tuesday, my dad and I stood at the corner from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. and counted the cars that drove through the crosswalk while someone was waiting at it or crossing, and in that single hour there were 14. Last spring, a sixth grader had to jump back onto the curb when a delivery van sped through the crosswalk without slowing down.

   Lincoln is also the oldest middle school in the county, and our marching band won first place at the county fair this summer. A school like ours deserves a street that looks as good as we do.

   Some people will say that warning lights and a crossing guard cost too much. But a flashing light costs far less than a trip to the emergency room, and no one can put a price on a student's safety.

   Please do not wait for a serious accident before making this dangerous corner safe.

   Sincerely,
   Hana Sato, seventh grade, Lincoln Middle School

   2.

   Which reason in the letter is irrelevant to the writer's claim?

   1. AA delivery van sped through the crossing without slowing down.
   2. BLincoln's marching band won first place at the county fair.
   3. CFourteen cars drove through the crosswalk in one hour.
   4. DMore than 300 students cross Elm Street each morning.
3. 3.

   How does the writer respond to people who say lights and a guard cost too much?

   1. AShe says the county fair should raise the money.
   2. BShe argues that a light costs far less than an injury would.
   3. CShe says that the school band will pay for the lights.
   4. DShe claims that crossing guards would be happy to work for free.
4. 4.

   Which detail best supports the writer's point that drivers do not stop at the crossing?

   1. AMore than 300 students cross there each morning.
   2. BThe speed limit on Elm Street near the school is 20 miles per hour.
   3. CElm Street is wide and straight.
   4. DShe counted 14 cars that drove through the crosswalk in one hour.
5. 5.

   Eye color is controlled by more than one gene.

   This sentence is from a science book. What does gene mean?

   1. Aa bone in the inner ear
   2. Ba section of DNA that controls a trait passed from parents to offspring
   3. Ca cell that fights germs
   4. Dthe green part of a leaf

6. From Bell to Bell

   The stagecoach set Abigail Pratt down in Lowell, Massachusetts, on a raw gray morning in March 1845, and the first thing she noticed was the sound. Even out on the street she could feel it: a deep, steady pounding that rose from the long brick mills beside the river, as if the whole city had a pulse.

   Abby was fourteen. She had grown up on a hill farm in New Hampshire, where the loudest noise was the creak of the barn door in the wind. But the farm owed money to the bank, and her older brother, Daniel, longed to study at the academy in town. When a neighbor's daughter returned from the mills with a new bonnet and money of her own, Abby's mother had studied Abby across the supper table for a long, silent moment. Within a week, Abby's trunk was packed.

   Mrs. Dalton, who kept the boardinghouse where Abby would live, was a widow with sharp eyes and a soft voice. She pointed to the regulations posted inside the front door: the doors were locked at ten o'clock each night, every boarder attended church on Sunday, and no one was permitted to waste time in idleness. Abby would share a crowded upstairs room with five other girls and a narrow bed with a nineteen-year-old weaver named Hannah Cole.

   "You'll hate the bell for a month," Hannah told her that night, braiding her hair by candlelight. "After that, you'll only hate it most days."

   The bell rang long before sunrise the next morning. It rang to send the girls to the mill, to summon them to breakfast, to send them back again, and to call them once more at midday for dinner. Within a week, Abby understood that in Lowell the bell, not the sun, decided when a day began and when it ended.

   The weaving room was worse than the street. Rows of looms clattered and banged so relentlessly that the girls communicated with gestures or read one another's lips. Cotton lint drifted through the hot, damp air like snow that never landed, and it settled in Abby's hair, her eyelashes, and the back of her throat. She was learning to tend a loom beside Hannah, and her fingers soon stung from tying broken threads. By Saturday night her feet were so swollen that she could barely unlace her boots.

   On Sunday afternoon she wrote her first letter home.

   "Dear Mother," she wrote. "Lowell is a fine place, and the work is not hard. Mrs. Dalton keeps a good table, and I am learning quickly." She paused and examined her cracked red fingers. Then she added, "Tell Father not to worry," and folded the letter before she could write anything true.

   At the end of the month, Abby was paid for the first time. Once the cost of her board was subtracted, only a few dollars remained, but it was more money than she had ever held in her hands. She kept a little for paper and postage and sent the rest home with a brief note: "For the bank, and for Daniel's books."

   One evening Hannah came in late from a meeting and dropped a slim magazine onto the bed. "The Lowell Offering," she announced. "Every word in it was written by women who work in the mills. I have a poem on page twelve."

   Abby stared at her. "You write? After an entire day at the looms?"

   "The company pays for my hands from bell to bell," Hannah said. "It doesn't own what I think."

   That night Abby read the magazine until Mrs. Dalton knocked and told them to put out the candle. There were stories about farms that resembled her own, an essay on the value of education, and a poem about a girl who missed the brook behind her father's house. The writers were exhausted girls like her, and yet they had found the time to say something, and someone had considered it worth printing.

   The next Sunday, Abby wrote to her mother again. The letter began the same way, but this time she did not stop where it was comfortable. She described the lint and the swollen feet and the clatter that followed her into her dreams. She also described the lending library in town, the evening lectures, and Hannah's poem. "I am tired, Mother," she wrote, "but I am not sorry I came."

   Then she took a fresh sheet of paper and wrote two words across the top: "The Bell." Underneath, she began: "It wakes us and feeds us and sends us to our beds. But there is one hour it cannot ring for, and that hour is mine."

   She was still writing when Mrs. Dalton's knock came at ten. Abby blew out the candle and lay smiling in the darkness. Tomorrow the bell would ring before sunrise, the way it always did. But tonight, for the first time since she had arrived in Lowell, she had been the one to decide when the day was over.

   6.

   What does Hannah's remark, "You'll hate the bell for a month. After that, you'll only hate it most days," reveal about her?

   1. AShe is honest about how hard mill life is but faces it with dry humor.
   2. BShe is trying to frighten Abby into going back to the farm.
   3. CShe expects the company to change its rules very soon.
   4. DShe does not understand why Abby came to Lowell at all.
7. 7.

   Among the boardinghouse rules, "no one was permitted to waste time in idleness." What does "idleness" mean?

   1. Adoing nothing useful
   2. Bwriting letters on Sunday
   3. Ctalking during meals
   4. Dspending money on clothes
8. 8.

   The story says cotton lint "drifted through the hot, damp air like snow that never landed." What does this simile suggest about the weaving room?

   1. AAbby missed the snowy winters on her family's farm.
   2. BThe lint hung in the air all the time and never cleared.
   3. CThe lint was pleasant to watch, like a winter scene.
   4. DThe weaving room was cold enough for real snow to fall indoors.
9. 9.

   How do Abby's two letters to her mother help develop the story?

   1. AThey reveal that Abby is secretly planning to return to the farm.
   2. BThey show that Abby's mother never once writes back to her daughter.
   3. CThey show Abby's letters growing more cheerful and less detailed over time.
   4. DThey show Abby moving from hiding her hardship to describing it honestly.
10. 10.

    ad·dress
    1. n. the number and street where someone lives
    2. n. a formal speech
    3. v. speak or write to someone directly
    4. v. deal with a problem
    
    Write your address on the envelope so the letter can find you.

    Which meaning of address is used in the sentence?

    1. AMeaning 1
    2. BMeaning 2
    3. CMeaning 3
    4. DMeaning 4