Free printable STAAR practice test for Grade 8

Reading Language Arts

Circle the letter of the best answer, or two letters where a question asks for two, and one letter in each row of a table and for each numbered blank. No time limit.

1. 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.

   1.

   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 expects the company to change its rules very soon.
   3. CShe is trying to frighten Abby into going back to the farm.
   4. DShe does not understand why Abby came to Lowell at all.
2. 2.

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

   1. Aspending money on clothes
   2. Btalking during meals
   3. Cdoing nothing useful
   4. Dwriting letters on Sunday
3. 3.

   Which TWO details best show that Abby's attitude toward her life in Lowell changes by the end of the story? Choose two answers.

   1. AHer feet are so swollen that she can barely unlace her boots.
   2. BShe learns that the bell, not the sun, decides when a day begins.
   3. CShe writes, "I am tired, Mother, but I am not sorry I came."
   4. DShe adds, "Tell Father not to worry," to her first letter.
   5. EShe has "been the one to decide when the day was over."
4. 4.

   Abby "folded the letter before she could write anything true." Why does she most likely do this?

   1. AShe plans to tell her mother the truth in person soon.
   2. BShe thinks her mother would refuse to believe her.
   3. CShe does not want her family to worry or feel guilty about her.
   4. DBoarders were not allowed to describe the mills in letters.
5. 5.

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

   1. AThey show that Abby's mother never once writes back to her daughter.
   2. BThey show Abby moving from hiding her hardship to describing it honestly.
   3. CThey reveal that Abby is secretly planning to return to the farm.
   4. DThey explain exactly how the mill wages were counted and paid out.
6. 6.

   Why does the author include the details about the farm's debt and Daniel's wish to study at the academy?

   1. ATo suggest that Abby wants to become a teacher herself
   2. BTo show that Abby's family is wealthier than her neighbors
   3. CTo show why Abby's wages matter so much to her family
   4. DTo explain why Daniel also takes a job in the mills
7. 7.

   Which sentence is a complex sentence?

   1. ABefore the concert began, the orchestra members tuned their instruments in a small room behind the stage.
   2. BThe seventh graders in Mr. Ruiz's homeroom collected canned food for the local shelter during the week before Thanksgiving.
   3. CThe old covered bridge over the river was closed for repairs, so the school bus took a longer route through town.
   4. DThe seventh graders raised over five hundred dollars at the fall carnival, and they donated the money to the animal shelter that rescued our class pet.
8. 8.

   After the fire drill, the students may (1) ______ to their next class.

   Which word best completes the sentence?

   (1)	Aproceed	Bpreceed	Cprocede	Dprecede

9. 9.

   Ava is writing a report about how much sleep teenagers need.

   Which source would be the most credible for this report?

   1. Aa video by a gamer who says he sleeps four hours a night
   2. Ban article written by doctors at a children's hospital
   3. Can advertisement for a new mattress
   4. Da short story about a girl who never sleeps
10. 10.

    In which sentence should the words in bold be set off with commas?

    1. AThe National Air and Space Museum which is part of the Smithsonian is free to visit.
    2. BPlayers who miss practice on Thursday will not start in Saturday's game.
    3. CAnimals that hibernate through the cold months slow down their heartbeat and breathing.
    4. DEvery student who turns in a permission slip can go on the field trip.