Appendix C Passages for Sample Items Grades 6 – 8 Grade 6 Passage A The Ocean’s Cleaning Stations, by Sandy Fox 2-C Passage B Ella Cara Deloria: Bridge Between Cultures, by Linda Crotta Brennan 4-C Passage C The Mystery of the Town Without a Mystery, By Catherine Carmody 6-C Grade 7 Passage D Florida’s Hummingbirds, By Joe Schaefer and Craig N. Huegel 9-C Passage E The World of N. C. Wyeth, by Diana Childress 12-C Passage F The Desperate Ride of Caesar Rodney, By Candace Fleming 14-C Grade 8 Passage G At War with the Mosquito, by Bruce T. Paddock 17-C Passage H The Right Choice, by Kari Kobil 19-C Passage I The Makings of a Star, by L. Hall 21-C 1-C Passage A Grade 6 The Ocean’s Cleaning Stations by Sandy Fox The green moray eel slithers from its hole in the coral and swims to a certain rock. There it lies, unmoving, with its tooth-filled mouth wide open. Most fish flee from this fierce predator. But a bright-striped goby fish swims boldly into the moray’s mouth. The eel stays motionless until the fish swims back out. What happened? Why didn’t the fierce moray eat the little goby? The moray came to an underwater cleaning station. Here certain species of small fish and shrimp clean the parasites off larger host fish. All fish have parasites, tiny ani­ mals that feed on their blood or skin. If parasites aren’t removed, fish can sicken and die. Several times, scientists have removed all the cleaners in an area and discovered that, after a few days, the fish population diminishes. And after two weeks, most of the fish left alive are covered with sores and fungus—and in bad need of a cleaning. Cleaners and host fish have a relationship called symbiosis, where each animal both gives and receives help from the other. A host fish gets its parasites removed, while a cleaner gets its food delivered. But, normally, small fish and shrimp are food for big fish. How does the goby know when it will be eaten and when it can eat? Host fish signal their need for cleaning with a set of elaborate movements. Although each species moves differently, all fish within a species move the same way. Bonnet- mouths and parrotfish, for example, approach a cleaner and then stop swimming. They hang in the water with either their heads or their tails straight up. The mouths open and gills spread. Goatfish (they have a “beard” like a goat’s) approach a cleaner and hang motionless. Some even change color to make their parasites show up better. By hanging upside down, a fish makes itself more vulnerable to predators. Some scientists think that this signals to cleaners that they have nothing to fear. It’s like laying down your weapon. Several kinds of shrimp, small gobies, and wrasses are cleaners. Some angelfish and hogfish are cleaners in the juvenile stage of their lives. Most of these have bold stripes on their bodies. The stripes of the juvenile cleaners disappear as the fish mature and stop cleaning. 2C Passage A Grade 6 Cleaning shrimp skitter across a host fish’s body, feasting on the crustaceans cling­ ing to its sides. Shrimp and cleaner fish will even swim into the host’s mouth, cleaning teeth and gullet like a tidy housekeeper. Cleanings can take from several seconds to two or three minutes. During this time both cleaner and fish are in danger from other animals. If either fish fears for its life, it immediately ends the cleaning ritual. If the host fish senses danger, it gives a little shudder. Then the cleaner has a chance to escape before the host fish swims away. Wrasses and other small cleaners move away more slowly, somehow knowing that they’re under a truce until they reach shelter. Small hosts are jumpy, leaving the cleaning station at the first sign of danger. Larger morays or groupers stay longer, even allowing divers to come quite close before backing away. Many ocean animals mimic or act like other animals. Aspidontus rhinorhynchus, the false cleaner fish, looks very much like a wrasse—stripes and all. But the false cleaner doesn’t clean other fish, it eats them. It hangs around the cleaning station, acting like a cleaner, even swimming in the jerky motion of a true wrasse. The host fish arrives and takes its position. Then the false cleaner boldly swims up and bites a piece off the host’s tongue or scales. By the time the surprised host fish responds, the false cleaner has fled with its meal. The only obvious difference between real and false cleaners is that the impostors’ mouths are on the lower part of their heads. Some host fish spot this difference and swim away from the cleaning station. Wise old ones open their mouths wide—and swallow the fake. But in undersea cleaning stations, most large and small fish cooperate. They call a truce, and their symbiosis improves the health and prolongs the lives of both host fish and cleaners. "The Ocean's Cleaning Stations", by Sandy Fox. From Cricket, July 1998, vol 25, no. 11. Photography by Norbert Wu © 1999, www.norbertwu.com 3C Passage B Grade 6 Ella Cara Deloria Bridge Between Cultures by Linda Crotta Brennan “I actually feel that I have a mission: To make the Dakota1 people understandable, as human beings, to the . people who . deal with them,” Ella Cara Deloria wrote in a letter to a friend in 1952. She had been born sixty-three years earlier on a Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota and given the Native American name Anpetu Waste, or Beautiful Day. Her father, Black Lodge, was part French and part Sioux. He also became one of the first Dakota Episcopal priests. Her mother, Mary, was Sioux and Irish, a granddaughter of the famous painter Thomas Sully. Ella was raised in a large and loving family in the traditional Sioux manner. She spoke Sioux before she spoke English. Her parents felt it was important for her to get a good education, and so she went away to boarding school and then on to college. It was at Columbia Teachers College that Ella met the person who would give purpose to her life. Franz Boas was the leader of a group of anthropologists studying Native American cultures. When he discovered Ella could speak Sioux, Dr. Boas asked her to trans- late a huge collection of stories by George Bushotter, a Sioux whose unpublished works had been left to the Smithsonian Institution. Ella agreed, and Dr. Boas paid her eighteen dollars a month to translate the texts while she was at school. Ella found she loved the work. After she graduated, Dr. Boas asked Ella if she would “study . the habits of action and thought . among the Dakota children and among adults. You will have to know all the details of everyday life. .” So Ella began her work as an ethnographer, or one who studies a people’s culture. She traveled to the Sioux reservations, collecting information on language, family and tribal structure, religious ceremonies, and the role of women. The old people were delighted when they found she could speak their native tongue, and they freely gave her their biographies, their myths, and their humorous stories. In the process, Ella assembled the largest body of information on any Plains Indian tribe. She wrote a Sioux-English dictionary, scholarly texts, collections of myths, and Speaking of Indians, a book to help people understand the Native American culture. She also lectured and performed dances for the YMCA and other organizations. Through it all, she considered “Father Franz,” as she called Boas, to be her inspiration. She wrote to him on his eighty-first birthday, saying, “I would not trade the privilege of having known you, for anything I can think of.” 1Dakota: another word for Sioux 4C Passage B Grade 6 Still, the science of ethnography that he taught her had to be objective and impersonal. Ella felt “one of the reasons for the lagging advance­ ment of the Dakotas has been that those who came out among them to teach and preach, went on the assumption that the Dakotas had nothing, no rules of life, no social organization, no ideals.” Ella wanted to show the larger culture that the Sioux were really feeling and caring human beings, with a deeply rooted culture of their own. The Dakotas were a people who put one another ahead of possessions. As Ella wrote, “The ultimate aim of Dakota life was quite simple: . One must be a good relative. Every other consideration was secondary—property, personal ambition, glory, good times, life itself.” Someone who did not care for the others in the tribe would no longer be considered Sioux or even human. In 1942 Ella Cara Deloria sat down to write the novel Waterlily. Based on research, Ella created the character Waterlily and followed her life from birth, through her childhood surrounded by lov­ ing relatives, and into adulthood and the birth of her own child. After careful writing and rewriting, Waterlily was finally finished in 1947, but no pub­ lisher would take it. The editors told her not enough readers would be interested. Ella sadly put Waterlily away with her other papers. She went back to doing research, lecturing, and caring for friends and family. As a true Sioux, Aunt Ella (as she now was called) always put others first. Sometimes that meant postponing an important research project to care for her father when he was ill, or helping her sister with her children.