Unit Assessment #1 Review

Explore personal space with this fun ELA worksheet! Includes a story & questions.

The Experiment The Experiment1 Ms. Gustafson prided herself on being a traditional social studies teacher who rarely departed from the curriculum. And, by most accounts, Ms. Gustafson was true to her reputation: she stuck to the textbook, with the exception of providing occasional supplementary primary sources to enlighten us with multiple perspectives on historic events. But not one of her students—least of all me—could explain the curricular departure that occurred on January 25.2 When Ms. Gustafson introduced the topic of the day as “The Experiment”— complete with a neon flashing title on the smartboard—our antennae perked up, because experiment was the last word we imagined would ever issue from her mouth.3 “You could call it a game, but I like to think of it as an experiment, which has a less predictable outcome than winning or losing,” Ms. Gustafson said, her eyes widening like a person ever-so-slightly obsessed. “The Experiment requires one brave volunteer to leave the room for five minutes, return when summoned, and attempt to solve a mystery. It’s quite simple, really.”4 My hand shot up in the air, seemingly without my asking it to do so. Then, collaborating with my hand, my mouth spoke the words, “I volunteer, Ms. Gustafson.”5 “Thank you for your fortitude, Mr. Embers,” Ms. Gustafson responded, addressing me by my last name as was her practice. “Now, let’s begin The Experiment at once. Please exit from the classroom for a five-minute stay in the media center, where Mr. Toskin is expecting you.”6 I followed Ms. Gustafson’s instructions and walked to the media center. Mr. Toskin awaited me with a timer already set to five minutes.7 Immediately after Mr. Toskin’s timer went off, my classmate Anastasia arrived to shepherd me back to class. Apparently, Anastasia was under strict orders to reveal nothing about The Experiment, which was beginning to seem sinister as our footsteps echoed in the silent hallway.8 When Anastasia and I entered the classroom, everyone was reading some documents that Ms. Gustafson had distributed at the beginning of class. Nothing appeared to be amiss.9 “Ms. Matthews,” instructed Ms. Gustafson, gesturing toward Anastasia, “please inform Mr. Embers about the homework assignment that I gave in his absence.”10 “What in the world is going on here?” I thought as Anastasia approached me. Ms. Gustafson had said I was supposed to solve a mystery. What seemed most mysterious, however, was the lack of anything mysterious happening!11 Anastasia began, “All right, Jamie, for our homework assignment due Thursday, we have to write an essay analyzing one of the following topics. . . .”12 That’s when the observable mystery began: as Anastasia described the essay assignment, my classmates suddenly began taking an unexpected interest in our seemingly mundane conversation. Soon nearly everyone was watching Anastasia and me. I heard an occasional snicker. Then somebody, losing the battle of trying to be subtle, marveled, “Oh my goodness, it actually works!” By the time Anastasia finished, my classmates were openly staring at me with a mixture of amazement and amusement.13 “All right, class, it appears to be time to end The Experiment,” Ms. Gustafson declared, perhaps sensing my discomfort. “Mr. Embers, have you solved the mystery?”14 Forced into unadulterated honesty, I said, “No, Ms. Gustafson, not even close! Why is everyone staring at me?”15 Several classmates gave each other knowing looks, which only worsened my feelings of confusion and helplessness.16 “Mr. Embers, perhaps you’ve heard of a concept called the zone of personal space,” explained Ms. Gustafson victoriously. “What I have termed The Experiment is meant to test this concept. I hope you’ll be relieved to hear that ninety-nine percent of the volunteers who have participated in The Experiment have failed to solve the mystery.”17 “But what’s the mystery?” I asked, only partially hiding my frustration.18 Anastasia took over: “The mystery,” she said, “is what happened while I was giving you the assignment. Every few seconds or so, I edged a tiny bit closer to you, and whenever I encroached on your zone of personal space—the area around you that you don’t like anyone to enter—you backed away from me just that same tiny bit. In the few minutes we spent talking about the assignment, you backed up all the way around this table without even realizing you were doing it! Watch me do it with Laney!” Anastasia and Laney demonstrated the journey I had taken around the table, and suddenly I understood why everyone had stared, snickered, and gaped in amazement.19 “All right,” I said, addressing everyone, “I get the mystery, and I get the solution, but what does this have to do with Buddhism—or with social studies?”20 “That is exactly what I want all of you to determine,” Ms. Gustafson answered in the same victorious tone. “The essay assignment that I gave all of you was a diversion. Your actual assignment is to figure out how the zone of personal space concept connects to our work in social and cultural studies, and write about that.”21 As everyone groaned, I gleaned at least some pleasure in knowing that the trick was on all of us—not just on me. 1. The author chose a school as the setting of this story most likely to — create a sense of alliance among the social studies and media teachers show that the narrator’s classmates only care about following rules develop themes about growing up and learning to accept change enhance the narrator’s confusion about what is or isn’t mysterious 2. The author wrote this selection most likely to — entertain readers with an eerie story urge teachers to be more creative demonstrate a lecture style of teaching inform readers about personal space 3. Which sentence best demonstrates that the story has an eerie element? My hand shot up in the air, seemingly without my asking it to do so. Mr. Toskin awaited me with a timer already set to five minutes. What seemed most mysterious, however, was the lack of anything mysterious happening! Several classmates gave each other knowing looks, which only worsened my feelings of confusion and helplessness. 4. Match each behavior or motivation to the correct influence on the plot. Ms. Gustafson’s desire to stick to the curriculum The Experiment strikes Jamie and his classmates as very strange. Anastasia’s silence when escorting Jamie back to the classroom Jamie begins to feel nervous, as if a dark force is at work. The students’ intense interest as Anastasia reviews the assignment with Jamie Jamie becomes desperate to find out what’s going on. Jamie’s desire to solve the mystery The plot moves toward full resolution. 5. Paragraphs 16 through 18 support the primary theme of the excerpt by emphasizing — the damaging effects of peer pressure the unexpected logic behind human behavior the tension between male and female students the unusual success of the narrator In the Dark In the Dark1 Barlo—not “Mr. Barlo,” just “Barlo”— owned a house down the street from ours, and the whispers about him in town hissed that no one was meaner, that he complained about everyone in the neighborhood for no apparent reason. My friends and I typically steered clear of the place, assuming that Barlo would chase us off his lawn if we ventured near. He remained shrouded in mystery, probably because he rarely left his house. His curtains slapped shut when we dared to walk past the house, Barlo’s elusive figure disappearing in the shadows.2 One November morning, Mom glanced out of the window over the kitchen sink and noticed the shed door swinging wide open in the breeze. We didn’t think much of it, accusing Dad of having left the door improperly latched. He grumbled something about old doorknobs as he shuffled outside, but when he came back in, he wore a puzzled expression.3 “The doorknob works, but it’s covered in dirt and looks like someone smeared mud along the bottom of the door. Nothing’s missing inside, as far as I can see, but it’s weird—it looks like someone tracked a lot of dirt in there.”4 A few weeks back, I had seen Barlo in a rare appearance outside of his house. He had stopped what he was doing to stare me down as Dad and I drove by. Naturally, I stared back. Barlo had been dragging a shovel toward his garage, and both the shovel and his old boots were caked with mud. He looked suspiciously like a man who was up to something.5 “It was Barlo,” I muttered quietly, afraid my parents would hear me accuse an innocent neighbor of busting open a shed, and irrationally terrified that Barlo himself would hear me all the way down the street and in my own kitchen. I knew nothing to justify my accusation of our neighbor beyond the shovel, boots, and, of course, the man himself.6 A week or two later, I woke up during the night to the crash of breaking glass in the back yard. I untangled myself from bed sheets and blankets and dashed to the window in time to see nothing but darkness. The next morning, there it was: one of Mom’s potted planters, smashed at the bottom of the stone steps, the floral arrangement missing. “Why in the world would someone take my flowers?” Mom cried, poking at the dirt with her sneakered toe. We looked around the yard in puzzlement. A high fence ran along the back of every back yard along our street, including ours, separating us from conservation land beyond. The only access to the yard lay along the side of the house, past my parents’ bedroom window. Only the bravest criminal would take such a risk of being caught.7 The next day, we discovered the bird feeder on the ground, seed tossed in every direction, and the soft ground broken and disturbed.8 “They walked all over there,” Mom griped, “churning up the soil. It almost looks like they dug around for something.” The time had come to get serious, so we bought motion detectors to illuminate the yard when something passed within range. Every time the lights flashed on, we scrambled to the nearest window, but by the time we got a good look into the back yard, the culprit had vanished. We tried leaving lights on all night, but of course, nothing ever happened during those nights. We met with neighbors, asking whether they were experiencing the same problem. And all the time I thought of Barlo, how he stared at me with that shovel in his hand, and how he shut himself off from the world.9 Fall progressed quietly, and Mom’s remaining flowers browned in the cold; only the evergreens in the back kept their color. Then in early December, it happened again.10 “My pine bushes!” Mom roared, waggling a finger at the window. “Every one’s been pulled up!” And so they were, a row of short evergreens that once lined the fence had been yanked whole from the cold ground and now lay mangled in random heaps. That’s when I knew I had to look at Barlo’s house.11 Barlo lived in the only eerie house in the neighborhood, desperately needing a coat of paint and a new garage door. But as I approached I noticed something different: Barlo had replaced his mailbox and post, which stood along the curb in shiny, new contrast to the scabby house behind it. Beside the mailbox grew a tiny evergreen bush, a new addition similar to the pines that once grew in our back yard. Barlo had been digging in his yard the afternoon before someone broke into our shed, leaving a trail of dirt behind. I walked casually past the house, certain he had destroyed our back yard but unable to find a logical reason why.12 Weeks passed, and on the morning of the first measurable snowfall, we all stood silently looking through the window to the back yard at deer tracks in the snow. They emerged from a hole in the fence behind the neighbor’s house, a hole once obscured by dense summer foliage. The tracks led to the shed, the bird feeder, and the evergreens. We’d found our vandal, and it wasn’t Barlo.13 Later that week, still feeling remorse from having misjudged Barlo, I left some of Mom’s homemade cookies in his new mailbox. A snap of the curtains told me he’d seen me approach. I glanced at his little pine tree, still green in December, and thought to myself, “Next time, I’ll leave him a note about the deer.” 6. The events in paragraph 4 are important because — Barlo’s actions in the past are changing his future the narrator’s past events are influencing his present decisions the narrator’s past events shape the way he sees himself Barlo’s house becomes part of the setting in the future 7. Read the sentence from paragraph 6.Mom’s response to her missing flowers adds to the conflict by — forcing the narrator to confront Barlo involving the neighbors increasing the tension between herself and the narrator reinforcing the idea that the vandal had to be a person 8. Which excerpt implies the narrator’s guilt over accusing an innocent man of destroying the yard? He looked suspiciously like a man who was up to something. “It was Barlo,” I muttered quietly, afraid my parents would hear me. I knew nothing to justify my accusation of our neighbor . . . Only the bravest criminal would take such a risk of being caught. 9. Read this sentence from paragraph 11 of the selection.The author includes this sentence most likely to emphasize — the narrator’s judgmental nature the narrator’s interest in the community Barlo’s reluctance to be active outside of his house Barlo’s preference for an older home 10.What do the narrator’s actions in paragraph 13 tell the reader about the theme of the selection? We should not assume the worst of people we do not know. Neighbors should take care of each other. We should never live with guilt or remorse. We should accept the help of our neighbors. 11. Living in a town in which the neighbors whisper about Barlo influences the narrator to — assume Barlo must be guilty defend Barlo join in on the gossip stop listening to the neighbors