Example #4: Common Core Quiz
Kelvin Doe Makes Radio Station out of Trash
Lexile Measure 990L Mean Sentence Length 17.36 Mean Log Word Frequency 3.76 Word Count 486
Readability average grade level 8.0
Most kids rather carelessly throw lots of stuff in the trash. Fifteen year-old Kelvin Doe of Sierra Leone finds stuff in the trash. From trash, he built a radio station. The station broadcasts news and music and now Kelvin is known as DJ Focus. He has engaged the help of classmates (average age 12) to report the news every day in his community.
In order to give the youth of his village a voice, he thought they needed a radio station. For that, he would need a transmitter. He went to work figuring out how to make one. Kelvin’s amazing ability to make a transmitter out of junk caught the attention of a fellow countryman, David Sengeh. Sengeh is a graduate student at the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Sengeh was so impressed with Kelvin that he arranged for him to come to MIT for three weeks. Sengeh tapped into the MIT International Developers Initiative, which paid for Kelvin’s airfare to the US. Kelvin, who had never previously been further than ten miles from home, made history by becoming the youngest person ever to come to MIT on that program.
One and half billion people around the globe need electricity. For that reason, a windmill is to be Kelvin’s next project.
Sengeh made a video of Kelvin’s inventions. It also shows him coming to MIT. Several colleges have offered Kelvin a full scholarship to come back to get a full university education.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.3Analyze the interactions between individuals, events, and ideas in a text (e.g., how ideas influence individuals or events, or how individuals influence ideas or events).
Question 1. Explain why Kelvin was invited to MIT, including the people and events that influenced Kelvin.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.1 Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
Kelvin Doe’s radio station was successful and reached a lot of listeners.
Question 2. Choose the best piece of textual evidence to support the above inference.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.2 Determine two or more central ideas in a text and analyze their development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text.
Question 3. Which of these details be unnecessary to include in an objective summary of the text?
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.6Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how the author distinguishes his or her position from that of others.
Question 4. “Most kids rather carelessly throw lots of stuff in the trash. Fifteen-year-old Kelvin Doe of Sierra Leone finds stuff in the trash. From trash, he built a radio station.”
How does the sentence “Most kids rather carelessly throw lots of stuff in the trash” serve the author’s purpose for writing this article?
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