Developing and sustaining foundational language skills: Generating Questions About Text (TEKS.ELA.8.5.B) Practice Test

On the first night of the July heat wave, Mateo walked his grandmother down a block that felt ten degrees hotter than the shaded street they had left. The sidewalks on their side were broad and bare; across the boulevard, a canopy of live oaks pooled dusk like a second sky. A city flyer in the laundromat window promised "cool corridors" if residents volunteered to plant trees. The fine print, however, announced a five-year wait for maintenance crews in "high-need zones." Mateo wondered who got to decide need. A radio host later praised a downtown plaza's misting arches, paid for by sponsorships, while callers described bus stops without benches, roofs shimmering like stovetops. A health researcher said heat does not strike evenly: asthma maps resemble tree-canopy maps; utility bills mirror old redlining lines. Yet a developer insisted reflective roofs and new apartments would "lift all boats," if only people were patient. As the sun sank, cicadas droned, and the laundromat fans rattled warm air. The flyer curled at its corners. Mateo folded it into his pocket anyway, thinking about shade, about policy, and about how comfort can become a boundary you cannot cross.

In a South Texas town, morning sprinklers ticked across a soccer field while a banner at city hall urged "Conserve Today." Farmers upstream were told to cut irrigation; downriver shrimpers watched the river meet the Gulf as a thin, salty ribbon. The river's flow, officials said, is a math problem: reservoirs, rainfall, aquifer recharge, and contracts signed when the population was a fraction of today's. A desalination plant glimmers in a slideshow, promising independence from drought—if residents accept higher rates and brine disposal near a fragile bay. A science teacher reminds her class that water moves in cycles, but budgets do not. At a neighborhood meeting, a retiree speaks of the 1950s drought, when wells went dry and people rationed hope; a developer counters that growth is itself a kind of solution, bringing money for pipes and innovation. Outside, a boy fills a plastic pool. Inside, maps splashed with red zones show neighborhoods that already endure boil notices. "Everyone will share the cost," a commissioner says, though no one defines "share." The town votes next month, and the ballots will weigh rain that has not fallen against promises that have not yet been tested.