Read the following sentence. All the hard work and effort that was put into the meal was recognized, and everyone ate until they weren't hungry anymore. Which words below could we replace the underlined words with to create a stronger visual image?

Read the following sentence. Instead of helping with the food Jimmy Armer's mother, mrs. Armer, instructed Jimmy to help decorate the house with flowers and plants. What change, if any, should be made to the sentence?

Read the following sentence. They all bringed red envelopes to give to the children in the family. Which change, if any, would be made to the sentence?

Read the following sentence. This was Jimmy's more favorite part of the entire celebration. What change, if any, should be made.

A hush falls over the audience as low and long notes float through the room. On the stage a man sits cradling a cello. He pulls a bow slowly across its strings. Soon other notes are drifting upward to meet his as the woodwinds, brass, percussion, and other strings of the orchestra become audible. For cellist Yo-Yo Ma, this is just one of many concerts that he has performed. Yet for the crowd, it is a night never to be forgotten. The beautiful music Ma creates will stay with them forever.

The sensory language in paragraph 1 helps the reader imagine —

4 -Everyone at the resort anticipated that Big Bird would fly away and rejoin his flock once he regained his health. However, the pelican did not budge. It turned out that Big Bird needed flying lessons! The staff raced along the beach, flapping their arms to simulate the act of flying. It may have looked silly to onlookers, but showing birds how to fly is a method that is sometimes used by human caretakers. “We aren’t sure how much flying he may have already done before arriving here, but he was pretty shaky,” staff posted on the resort’s website blog.

5 -The staff members, however, were not discouraged. “He would look on curiously,” the blog reported, “until one day he showed us how it was done!” Big Bird’s first attempts were short. He was wild in the air and even wilder when trying to land. There were some close calls with the beach furniture as Big Bird was learning to distinguish between the air and the ground. Little by little, though, the efforts of the staff began to pay off.

Based on paragraphs 4 and 5, what can the reader infer about the staff members at the resort?

I sit on my dock

dangling my feet

in the water

counting dragonflies.

My father and brothers

come closer

and from the water

lift their faces with

wild wet smiles.

And I think

This year!

The alliteration in lines 7 through 9 emphasizes the —

Read the dictionary entry entry. consume v. 1. to waste away 2. to eat 3. to spend time 4. to destroy by burning

The dog began to consume his dog food as he was very hungry.

Which definition best matches the way the word consumed is used in the sentence?

Earthquakes start deep beneath the Earth's surface. The outer layer of the Earth is called the crust. It is made up of plates that are always slowly moving past one another, side to side and up and down. This causes the Earth's rocks to rub up against and slide past each other, which creates a break in the crust called a fault. Faults can be deep below the Earth's surface, or they can be seen at the top. Some are short and others are very long. The San Andreas Fault, which caused a huge earthquake in San Francisco in 1906, is 600 miles long! As the movements of the plates travel away from the fault, they cause the rocks in the Earth to vibrate for many miles around. These vibrations make the ground split open, and this is what we call an earthquake. Some earthquakes are so small that we don't even feel them. Others are very powerful and can cause a lot of destruction.

Which of these key ideas are supported by the information above?

The great white pelican is one of the largest species of flying birds on the planet. The birds can weigh up to 33 pounds. When they spread their wings, the length from tip to tip is nearly 12 feet. The staff members knew Big Bird would need a lot of food to grow to full adult size. In the wild a flock of pelicans will work together to corral fish into shallow water and scoop them up. But Big Bird did not have a flock, so the resort staff asked the park authority for permission to feed him. With steady meals of fish provided by the resort staff, Big Bird grew bigger.

The details in the paragraph about how great white pelicans catch fish support the idea that Big Bird —