Reading Standards for Literature > Understanding Point of View (CCSS.RL.8.4) Practice Test

1 The auditorium breathed like a sleeping animal, its low hum rising and falling in patient waves. 2 I stood backstage, laces double-knotted, palms stinging as if they had tasted snow. 3 The curtain, heavy as night, held its breath with me. 4 Beyond it, a thousand chairs waited, their metal legs bristling like grass before a storm. 5 Mr. Alvarez whispered, "Anchor your voice," and it sounded like a lighthouse speaking to a ship. 6 I nodded, though my thoughts were birds beating at the rafters. 7 The fluorescent lights were winter moons, pale and far, refusing to warm anyone. 8 Somewhere a program fluttered to the floor, a white fish in a dark river. 9 I had practiced until words fit together like puzzle pieces, snug and certain. 10 But certainty is a shy animal; it bolts the moment applause is imagined. 11 I remembered the story of Icarus, bright with borrowed feathers, reaching where air thins and rules change. 12 I was not flying, only stepping forward, yet the edge still glimmered like a blade. 13 "Cast off," I told myself, as if leaving a harbor I had lived in all year. 14 The audience murmured, a tide that could lift or swallow. 15 My name curled through the speakers, suddenly strange, like a coat returned from the dry cleaners. 16 I walked onstage. 17 The lights pressed down, and the stage floor widened into an ocean I had to cross. 18 Notes waited in my pocket, an emergency map I refused to unfold. 19 I began with a joke, a small flame, and heard the room catch in scattered sparks. 20 Laughter loosened the ropes around my chest. 21 Words gathered speed, wheels taking a hill, and the argument found its spine. 22 I alluded to a chessboard, choices ticking forward, each move a promise and a price. 23 When a cell phone chimed, it was a stray gull; it passed, and the water smoothed. 24 By the final line, my voice was steady as a metronome deciding the tempo of rain. 25 I bowed, not like a conqueror but like someone setting down a full bucket. 26 Backstage again, the curtain sighed, and the sleeping animal turned over, still kind.

1 The auditorium breathed like a sleeping animal, its low hum rising and falling in patient waves. 2 I stood backstage, laces double-knotted, palms stinging as if they had tasted snow. 3 The curtain, heavy as night, held its breath with me. 4 Beyond it, a thousand chairs waited, their metal legs bristling like grass before a storm. 5 Mr. Alvarez whispered, "Anchor your voice," and it sounded like a lighthouse speaking to a ship. 6 I nodded, though my thoughts were birds beating at the rafters. 7 The fluorescent lights were winter moons, pale and far, refusing to warm anyone. 8 Somewhere a program fluttered to the floor, a white fish in a dark river. 9 I had practiced until words fit together like puzzle pieces, snug and certain. 10 But certainty is a shy animal; it bolts the moment applause is imagined. 11 I remembered the story of Icarus, bright with borrowed feathers, reaching where air thins and rules change. 12 I was not flying, only stepping forward, yet the edge still glimmered like a blade. 13 "Cast off," I told myself, as if leaving a harbor I had lived in all year. 14 The audience murmured, a tide that could lift or swallow. 15 My name curled through the speakers, suddenly strange, like a coat returned from the dry cleaners. 16 I walked onstage. 17 The lights pressed down, and the stage floor widened into an ocean I had to cross. 18 Notes waited in my pocket, an emergency map I refused to unfold. 19 I began with a joke, a small flame, and heard the room catch in scattered sparks. 20 Laughter loosened the ropes around my chest. 21 Words gathered speed, wheels taking a hill, and the argument found its spine. 22 I alluded to a chessboard, choices ticking forward, each move a promise and a price. 23 When a cell phone chimed, it was a stray gull; it passed, and the water smoothed. 24 By the final line, my voice was steady as a metronome deciding the tempo of rain. 25 I bowed, not like a conqueror but like someone setting down a full bucket. 26 Backstage again, the curtain sighed, and the sleeping animal turned over, still kind.