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STAAR English I & II - Text Evidence Task Cards

Last updated over 2 years ago
20 questions
Read the selection and choose the best answer to each question.

Excerpt from Popular By Maya Van Wagenen

I feel like a princess on a float. So I just smile and wave. The whole Popular Table is talking to me, competing, even, for my attention. As the bell rings on another successful lunch, I get up. One of the Football Faction members leans over to me. “Don’t sit at the gangster table. They’re scary.” I’m shocked at his warning. “I already sat with them. They were really nice. They just don’t speak much English.” He shakes his head and disappears. When I get into the hall, all the choir girls surround me. “What were you doing?” they ask. “I’ve sat with everyone. They weren’t too bad.” “But the jocks are terrifying!” “Maya, you’re amazing!” “You are so brave!” Wow, I mean . . . Wow. I’ve never been considered brave, or even bold.” I practically soar down the hall to my next class, but a question keeps bringing me back to reality: Why is everyone so scared of one another?
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Which sentence best supports the idea that the narrator is not as worried about joining new friend groups as most people?

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Why is the dialogue important in the excerpt?

Excerpt from Sherlock Holmes By Arthur Conan Dole

I smiled and shook my head. “I can quite understand your thinking so,” I said. “Of course, in your position of unofficial adviser and helper to everybody who is absolutely puzzled, throughout three continents, you are brought in contact with all that is strange and bizarre. But here”—I picked up the morning paper from the ground—“let us put it to a practical test. Here is the first heading upon which I come. ‘A husband’s cruelty to his wife.’ There is half a column of print, but I know without reading it that it is all perfectly familiar to me. There is, of course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the bruise, the sympathetic sister or landlady. The crudest of writers could invent nothing more crude.” “Indeed, your example is an unfortunate one for your argument,” said Holmes, taking the paper and glancing his eye down it. “This is the Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with it. The husband was a teetotaler, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife, which, you will allow, is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the average story-teller. Take a pinch of snuff, Doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you in your example.”
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Which phrase from the excerpt suggests that Holmes is arrogant?

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In this excerpt, the author depicts the characters as -

Excerpt from Is it Right for People to have the Ability to Select their Child’s Traits? By Ruby

Cohabitating in an ever-changing society can be a challenge to all people, some more than others. Within our changing society, we can also be challenged with the idea of new technology to advance our development. With the societal norms causing people to conform to certain standards and the new technology of Genetic Engineering, is it right for people to have the ability to select their child’s traits to live up to a standard? Through an ethical standpoint, it goes against all moral laws of natural selection and the idea of our traits coming from our parents. From a scientific standpoint, it could be the next biggest medical breakthrough to cure the world. This idea of so-called “designer babies” is a very controversial thing in society today and if it becomes a reality there must be many regulations put into place.
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Which phrase suggests that this type of Genetic Engineering might have a negative effect on humans?

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The excerpt provides support for the author’s claim that -

Excerpt from Oliver Twist By Charles Dickens

The medical gentleman walked away to dinner; and the nurse, having once more applied herself to the green bottle, sat down on a low chair before the fire, and proceeded to dress the infant. What an excellent example of the power of dress, young Oliver Twist was! Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only covering, he might have been the child of a nobleman or a beggar; it would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have assigned him his proper station in society. But now that he was enveloped in the old calico robes which had grown yellow in the same service, he was badged and ticketed, and fell into his place at once—a parish child—the orphan of a workhouse—the humble, half-starved drudge—to be cuffed and buffeted through the world—despised by all, and pitied by none. Oliver cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan, left to the tender mercies of church-wardens and overseers, perhaps he would have cried the louder.
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Which phrase from the excerpt explains how people are judged?

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Based on details in this excerpt, the reader can conclude that Oliver will -

Excerpt from How does Technology Affect our Day to Day  Lives? By Emmanuela

Through reading one of George Orwell’s classic and most well-known pieces of literature, Orwell’s prediction relating to technology plays a similar and an important role not only in the book itself but to our personal lives, where day to day we are surrounded by technology and being connected to the web. Orwell forms an idea and understanding that technology causes an infringement of an individuals privacy, where almost every move is monitored by some device system. This works similar to a tracking system. Nothing goes unseen, and in most cases, technology seems to be what ends up hooking us to our social media, losing a true sense and experience of the world surrounding us. Though his ideas were quite spot on with what is happening around us today, I definitely believe there was no realization to what extreme level and extent it is at this current time. Forms of technology such as Siri or even Amazon’s Alexa operate with the human feature to talk and socialize such as if you are carrying a conversation with another human being. Conversations regarding asking questions, and finding today’s weather such as the temperature outside can be carried with a touch of a button. But, this comes at a tole creating a history where previous things you have searched remain visible to look back to. Orwell’s characters struggle with finding and settling to a place where there is not a way to be traced or tracked down. There is no true form of being alone. Everything is monitored.
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In which sentence does the author seem to accept that technology has gone too far?

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What is the primary purpose of the article?

Excerpt from The War of the Worlds By H. G. Wells

I clambered into the pit and fancied I heard a faint movement under my feet. The top had certainly ceased to rotate. It was only when I got thus close to it that the strangeness of this object was at all evident to me. At the first glance it was really no more exciting than an overturned carriage or a tree blown across the road. Not so much so, indeed. It looked like a rusty gas float. It required a certain amount of scientific education to perceive that the grey scale of the Thing was no common oxide, that the yellowish-white metal that gleamed in the crack between the lid and the cylinder had an unfamiliar hue. “Extra-terrestrial” had no meaning for most of the onlookers. At that time it was quite clear in my own mind that the Thing had come from the planet Mars, but I judged it improbable that it contained any living creature. I thought the unscrewing might be automatic. In spite of Ogilvy, I still believed that there were men in Mars. My mind ran fancifully on the possibilities of its containing manuscript, on the difficulties in translation that might arise, whether we should find coins and models in it, and so forth. Yet it was a little too large for assurance on this idea. I felt an impatience to see it opened. About eleven, as nothing seemed happening, I walked back, full of such thought, to my home in Maybury. But I found it difficult to get to work upon my abstract investigations.
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What detail best supports the narrator's belief that the Thing is from another planet?

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Details about the narrator imply that he -

Excerpt from I Am Malala By Malala Yousafzai

I would often wander away from the children’s games, tiptoe through the women’s quarters, and join the men. That, it seemed to me, was where something exciting and important was happening. I didn’t know what it was, exactly, and I certainly didn’t understand the politics, but I felt a pull to the weighty world of the men. I would sit at my father’s feet and drink in the conversation. I loved to hear the men debate politics. But mostly I loved sitting among them, hypnotized by this talk of the big world beyond our valley.      Eventually, I’d leave the room and linger awhile among the women. The sights and sounds in their world were different. There were gentle, confiding whispers. Tinkling laughter sometimes. Raucous, uproarious laughter sometimes. But most stunning of all: The women’s headscarves and veils were gone. Their long dark hair and pretty faces—made up with lipstick and henna—were lovely to see.      I had seen these women nearly every day of my life observing the code of purdah, where they cover themselves in public. Some, like my mother, simply draped scarves over their faces; this is called niqab. But others wore burqas, long, flowing black robes that covered the head and face, so people could not even see their eyes. Some went so far as to wear black gloves and socks so that not a bit of skin was showing. I’d seen the wives be required to walk a few paces behind their husbands. I’d seen the women be forced to lower their gaze when they encountered a man. And I’d seen the older girls who’d been our playmates disappear behind veils as soon as they became teenagers.      But to see these women chatting casually—their faces radiant with freedom—was to see a whole new world.
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What phrase explains Malala’s interests in the women’s world?

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In paragraph 2, the word raucous means -

Excerpt from Robinson Crusoe By Daniel Defoe

It was not till almost a year after this that I broke loose, though, in the meantime, I continued obstinately deaf to all proposals of settling to business, and frequently expostulated with my father and mother about their being so positively determined against what they knew my inclinations prompted me to.  But being one day at Hull, where I went casually, and without any purpose of making an elopement at that time; but, I say, being there, and one of my companions being about to sail to London in his father’s ship, and prompting me to go with them with the common allurement of seafaring men, that it should cost me nothing for my passage, I consulted neither father nor mother any more, nor so much as sent them word of it; but leaving them to hear of it as they might, without asking my father’s, without any consideration of circumstances or consequences, and in an ill hour on the 1st of September 1651, I went on board a ship bound for London.  Never any young adventurer’s misfortunes, I believe, began sooner, or continued longer than mine.  The ship was no sooner out of the Humber than the wind began to blow and the sea to rise in a most frightful manner; and, as I had never been at sea before, I was most inexpressibly sick in body and terrified in mind.  I began now seriously to reflect upon what I had done, and how justly I was overtaken by the judgment for my wicked leaving my father’s house, and abandoning my duty.  All the good counsels of my parents, my father’s tears and my mother’s entreaties, came now fresh into my mind; and my conscience, which was not yet come to the pitch of hardness to which it has since, reproached me with the contempt of advice, and the breach of my duty to my father.
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Which quotation shows that the narrator changed his mind?

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The narrator mentions his parents to convey that they -

Excerpt from National School Lunch Program

The Great Depression greatly exacerbated and highlighted the depths of hunger in America. In response, in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration set up a New Deal agency (Federal Surplus Relief Corporation/Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation) to distribute surplus food, such as pork and dairy products, to those in need. Part of this effort included the first federal implementation of a school lunch program. The agency placed representatives in each state to work with local schools to spur participation, which grew more than five-fold from about 900,000 students in 1939 to 5.2 million in 1942.
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Which quotation best supports the author’s belief that many families were in need of food?

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Which word in the article means “to put a plan into effect”?

Excerpt from Twelve Years a Slave By Solomon Northup

Having been born a freeman, and for more than thirty years enjoyed the blessings of liberty in a free State—and having at the end of that time been kidnapped and sold into Slavery, where I remained, until happily rescued in the month of January, 1853, after a bondage of twelve years—it has been suggested that an account of my life and fortunes would not be uninteresting to the public. Since my return to liberty, I have not failed to perceive the increasing interest throughout the Northern States, in regard to the subject of Slavery. Works of fiction, professing to portray its features in their more pleasing as well as more repugnant aspects, have been circulated to an extent unprecedented, and, as I understand, have created a fruitful topic of comment and discussion. I can speak of Slavery only so far as it came under my own observation—only so far as I have known and experienced it in my own person. My object is, to give a candid and truthful statement of facts: to repeat the story of my life, without exaggeration, leaving it for others to determine, whether even the pages of fiction present a picture of more cruel wrong or a severer bondage.
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Which detail from the excerpt explains why the narrator is writing about his life?

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The final line implies that -