Reading Standards for Informational Text > Connecting Story Elements (CCSS.RI.6.1) Practice Test

When Maya noticed how much food was thrown away at lunch, she started a Green Team with a simple plan: weigh the trash before and after new signs reminded students what could be composted. At first, only six students showed up to weigh banana peels and tally milk cartons. They set up a sorting station and explained the labels to anyone who hesitated with a tray. Within two weeks, the piles began to change shape. We built a display showing how many pounds of food were saved each week. The principal mentioned the project during morning announcements and asked every homeroom to try it. The custodian said fewer trash bags were coming from our lunch room. Some days were messy, but the team kept recording numbers and celebrating small wins with stickers for careful sorters. By October, the art club asked if we could teach them to run a waste audit at their bake sale. Even the basketball team agreed to use compostable cups at practice. The Green Team realized that collecting data made it easier to convince people, because the numbers showed that tiny choices added up.

Lina wanted her grandparents to send voice messages to her in Spanish without feeling shy about the buttons on a phone. She taught herself a beginner coding course online and built a simple app where you tap one big circle to record. The first try crashed when she switched languages. She nearly quit after a long Saturday of errors. On Sunday, she reread her notes and watched another tutorial. She kept a notebook where each bug entry included what caused it and how she fixed it. After three versions, the screen finally loaded without freezing, and the microphone icon turned red only when it was actually recording. Her grandparents smiled when they saw their language appear first. Lina added a picture of their parrot to make them laugh, and she set the app to start in large-text mode. Winning second place in the city showcase surprised her, but she was prouder that her grandfather sent her a joke as his first message. When a classmate asked how she learned so fast, Lina said the real secret was not magic: it was paying attention to mistakes until they told her what to try next.