SAT Vocabulary List One Assessment

Master Maya Angelou's story & build ELA skills!

Directions: Read the following passage carefully and fill in the blanks with the correct word from this week’s word list. Think about the definitions carefully. Maya Angelou was honored by William Jefferson Clinton when he invited her to read a poem she had written to celebrate his inauguration as the forty-second president of the United States. This was a fitting tribute to the woman whose early life had seemed so empty of promise when she was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, sixty-four years before. She sums up that life in a concise manner using these lines from one of her poems:” …birthing is hard dying is mean living’s a trail in between.” When she was still a small child, her parents divorced; she and her older brother Bailey were raised by their grandmother, Annie Henderson, affectionately known as Momma. Mrs. Henderson was the proprietor of the only general store in Stamps, Arkansas, owned by an African American. In her first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou evokes the memory of Momma’s powerful presence as she lovingly describes the way her grandmother coped with the bigotry and racial hatred that was widespread in the country in the 1930s. It was this resilience that most impressed Angelou and which she herself tried to emulate in her own life. One example of such bigotry involved a visit to the dentist. Angelou was suffering from an excruciating toothache. Momma had no choice but to take her granddaughter to the town’s only dentist, who was white. When she asked him to treat the little girl’s toothache, he rebuffed her, using extremely demeaning language. He told her that he would rather put his hand in a dog’s mouth than treat a black person. Momma reminded him that she had helped him in the past by making him interest free loans; now she was asking a favor in return. But he brusquely and harshly responded that his debts had been paid. He ordered her to leave. After taking her grandchild out of the office, Momma returned and stood her ground. She demanded that the dentist pay her a fair rate of interest on the loans she had made him. Momma and her granddaughter eventually traveled to Texarkana, where the nearest African-American dentist practiced. When Angelou was eight years old, she and her brother went to live with their mother in St. Louis. There her mother’s boyfriend abused her. He threatened to harm Bailey if she told anyone. When Angelou became ill, her mother discovered the despicable or horrible abuse. The boyfriend was brought to trial and convicted. But the shock of the experience left Angelou unable to speak for a year. In spite of her troubled and turbulent childhood, a spirit of optimism pervades or spreads throughout I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In it, Angelou pays tribute to those who helped and encouraged her like Bertha Flowers. She gave Angelou books and introduced her to the pleasures of reading poetry, drama, and great novels. As a result of Flowers’s influence, Angelou became an avid reader. This led to her dream of becoming a writer. Four more volumes of autobiography and many collections of poetry followed I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. All appeared under her pseudonym, Maya Angelou, a name she began using in the 1950’s. Angelou had triumphed over many difficulties, strengthened by the deep faith expressed in the lines from the poem, “Life up your hearts new hour holds new chances/ For a new beginning.” Both “Sucker” by Carson McCullers and “A Poet of the People” about Maya Angelou show how people deal with pain and hard times.In “Sucker,” Pete hurts someone he cares about and feels regret for how he acted.In “A Poet of the People,” Maya Angelou faces unfair treatment and tough experiences but grows stronger because of them.Prompt:In at least seven sophisticated sentences, explain how both stories show people responding to pain or challenges.Compare how Pete and Maya handle their problems and what each story teaches about dealing with hard times.Use the RACE strategy to write your response:R – Restate the question in your first sentence.A – Answer by telling how both characters deal with their struggles.C – Cite evidence (quotes or details) from each story to support your answer.E – Explain what the evidence shows about how each person changes or grows. fromCaramelloby Sandra Cisneros “Don’t laugh so hard,” the Grandmother scolds. “You’ll swallow your tongue. Watch, see if I’m wrong. Don’t you know whenever you laugh this hard, you’ll also cry as hard later the same day?” “Does that mean if we cry hard first thing in the morning, we’ll laugh just as hard before we go to sleep?” I ask and ask, but the Grandmother won’t answer. “And never, never-never-never step outside the courtyard gates! You could be stolen by kidnappers! How would you like that? Don’t laugh, it happens every day.”The author could have chosen to just say something like "And then the Grandmother scolded her granddaughter for laughing." By having the Grandmother speak these lines instead, what does the author help the reader to do? To imagine how the character sounds and acts To dislike the Grandmother To finish the book faster D. To avoid being bored The basketball court was quieter than a cemetery at midnight. Rob sat on the bench staring at floor. The floor was golden brown and shiny like water under the sunlight. To Rob, nothing was more beautiful than the basket up high. The basket was the star he wished to shoot for, and the ball was his flying ship. He held the basketball in his arms like a newborn. What if I can't do it? Rob thought about the scariest possibility. What if Dad is actually right about my legs? Could I ever be the star he was? He felt feverish in anguish. He got up slower than a sunflower's speed of growth and faced his fears. I broke my foot once, so what? I have weak knees, but I could do it, Rob reassured himself.How does the author show the importance of playing basketball for Rob? by showing how his knees may be too weak to play sports by describing the amount of pain Rob feels in his broken leg by describing the clean and quiet state of the basketball court by comparing the basket to a star and the ball to a flying ship (1) The fatigued cowboys scoured the countryside from hill to valley. (2) _, there were no signs of the lost cows anywhere. (3) It had taken the cowboys days to hunt down a possible trail for the cows. (4) The track marks that they could find were barely visible. (5) The dust and wind picked up across the plains. (6) This was troubling for the cowboys. (7) They needed to find the cows before sundown because there was no way these animals could survive in this dust storm. (8) The cowboys steadily moved forward.For sentence 2, which linking word or phrase best fits in the blank? Yet Before this To illustrate Next Dr. Beel was late. After waiting ten minutes, Julio noticed a magazine on the table. It was titledWinners Weekly. On the cover, a boy in a wheelchair held a sports trophy. "Oh, sure," grumbled Julio. "Who let Harry Handicap hold the trophy?" He opened the magazine and started reading about wheelchair weightlifting. Julio could hardly believe the words. Can boys in wheelchairs really compete in sports? he asked himself. Suddenly, he heard someone call his name. He looked up and relaxed. A powerful man in a white coat stood by Julio's wheelchair. "Sorry to keep you waiting," said Dr. Beel.What does the passage above foreshadow? Julio will start competing in sports. Julio will call his mom to pick him up. Julio will get surgery so he can walk. Julio will write for Winners Weekly. Fanny Frostby A. GautamShe's always sad in April,even when flowers bloom.She says it gives her a fever.Summer gives her more gloom.She looks out of the windowquietly, when it rains.She doesn't dance, instead she says,"The sky is sad, it drops its chains."She loves the winters more—to dance and ski, we're told.The wool, the scarves, and glovesShe loves the white, the cold.What statement about the seasons can be drawn from the theme of this poem? Some seasons make some people's lives boring. Most people don't care about the seasonal changes. Seasons affect the way people view the world. People act according to the season they are born in.