Virginia SOL-style Practice Test 1 — Reading (Grade 8)

In 1812, in the small French village of Coupvray, a three-year-old boy wandered into his father's workshop. Simon-René Braille made harnesses and saddles for horses, and his workbench was covered with sharp tools. Young Louis picked up an awl, a pointed tool used to punch holes in leather, and tried to copy his father's work. The tool slipped and struck his eye. An infection followed and spread to his other eye, and by the age of five, Louis Braille was completely blind.

In the early 1800s, few blind children received any schooling at all. Louis was fortunate. His parents were determined that he would learn, and a local priest and teacher helped him attend the village school, where he memorized his lessons by listening. He was so bright that in 1819, at the age of ten, he won a scholarship to the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, one of the first schools of its kind in the world.

The school owned a small library of books for blind readers, but the books were difficult to use. Their letters were embossed, raised from the page, in the same shapes that sighted people saw. Readers had to trace each large letter slowly with their fingers to tell an "O" from a "Q." The books were enormous and heavy, and a single story might fill several volumes. Worst of all, students could read these books, but they had no practical way to write in the same system.

In 1821, a retired army captain named Charles Barbier visited the school. He had designed a code called "night writing," which used patterns of raised dots to stand for sounds. Barbier hoped the code would let soldiers pass messages in the dark without speaking or lighting a lamp. The army had found the system too complicated, but the students at the institute were eager to try it. Louis discovered that dots were far more tactile, or easier to recognize by touch, than the curves of printed letters.

Barbier's code still had serious problems, however. Each symbol could use up to twelve dots, arranged in two columns of six, which was too large to feel with a single fingertip. It also stood for sounds rather than spelling, so it had no way to show punctuation or numbers. Louis, then only twelve years old, began experimenting. For three years he worked on the problem in every spare moment: at night, during holidays, even on visits home to Coupvray.

By 1824, when he was fifteen, Louis had created a system based on a cell of just six dots, arranged in two columns of three. A cell was small enough to be felt all at once by one fingertip, and the six positions could be combined in 63 different ways, enough for every letter, punctuation mark, and number. Later, Louis adapted the system for mathematics and music as well. Because a simple pointed tool called a stylus could press the dots into paper, blind students could at last write as easily as they could read.

Surprisingly, the new system was not welcomed by everyone. Some teachers at the institute preferred the older raised letters because sighted people could read them too. At one point, a director of the school even banned the dot system, and students continued to use it in secret. Louis, who became a teacher at the institute, kept improving his code for the rest of his life.

Louis Braille died in 1852, at the age of forty-three. Two years later, the institute officially adopted his system. Today, braille is used in countries around the world and has been adapted for dozens of languages. It appears on elevator buttons, medicine boxes, and restaurant menus, and it can now be read on electronic devices that raise and lower tiny pins to form the dots. Nearly two centuries after a boy in a French village set out to solve a problem, his six dots remain one of the most important inventions in the history of reading.

When rain falls on a forest or a meadow, most of it soaks into the ground. Leaves slow the falling drops, and roots and soil act like a giant sponge. But when rain falls on a town, the story is different.

Where Does the Rain Go?

Roofs, driveways, parking lots, and roads are impervious surfaces, hard surfaces that water cannot pass through. Rain that lands on them has nowhere to go, so it rushes downhill as stormwater runoff. Along the way, it picks up whatever it finds: oil from cars, fertilizer from lawns, pet waste, and litter. Storm drains carry this dirty water into nearby streams and rivers, often without cleaning it first. In heavy storms, the rushing water can also wear away stream banks and flood low-lying streets.

How a Rain Garden Works

A rain garden is a shallow, bowl-shaped garden filled with hardy plants, usually native species. It is placed where it can catch runoff from a roof, driveway, or lawn. Instead of racing into a storm drain, the water collects in the garden and slowly soaks into the ground, usually within a day or two. As it filters down through the soil and roots, many pollutants are trapped or broken down. The deep roots of native plants also open channels in the soil, helping even more water sink in.

A rain garden is not a pond. Because the water drains away quickly, the garden does not become a breeding ground for mosquitoes, which need standing water for about a week to develop.

Planning Your Rain Garden

1. Choose the spot. Look for a low area at least 10 feet from your home's foundation so that water does not seep into the basement. Avoid places above septic systems or underground utility lines.
2. Test the soil. Dig a hole about 8 inches deep and fill it with water. If the water has not drained away within 24 hours, the soil holds water too long, and you should choose a different spot.
3. Dig the bowl. Most home rain gardens are 4 to 8 inches deep. Pile the extra soil on the downhill side to form a low wall called a berm, which helps hold water in the garden.
4. Plant for wet and dry. Put plants that can handle wet roots in the center, where water collects, and plants that prefer drier soil around the edges.

Did You Know?
One inch of rain falling on a 1,000-square-foot roof produces about 620 gallons of water. That is enough to fill about a dozen large bathtubs, and without a rain garden, most of it may end up in a storm drain.

Small Gardens, Big Results

One rain garden will not solve a town's stormwater problem. But when many neighbors build them, the results add up. Some communities now help residents pay for plants or offer free advice on design. Each garden also provides food and shelter for butterflies, bees, and birds. In my view, few projects a family can take on do as much good in a single weekend.

Passages 6 and 7 are a paired set. Read both passages, then answer the questions that follow.

Each February, one of the largest animal migrations in North America takes place, and it happens on highways. Beekeepers from across the United States load their hives onto flatbed trucks and drive them to California, where more than a million acres of almond trees are about to bloom. Almond flowers must be pollinated to produce nuts, and the orchards need far more pollinators than the local area can supply. Without the traveling honeybees, the almond harvest would fail.

Honeybees are especially valuable to farmers because they can be managed. A single colony may contain tens of thousands of workers, and beekeepers can move colonies wherever and whenever crops need them. After the almond bloom, many hives travel on to apple orchards in Washington, blueberry fields in Maine, or clover fields in the Midwest.

Honeybees are not native to the Americas. European colonists brought them to Virginia in the 1620s, and the bees soon spread across the continent. Today, honeybees help pollinate dozens of crops, from apples to cucumbers. For many farmers, the rented hive has become as important a tool as the tractor.

When most people picture a bee, they imagine a honeybee. Yet North America is home to about 4,000 species of native bees, and many of them are expert pollinators in their own right.

Most native bees live very differently from honeybees. They do not make honey or live in large hives. Instead, the majority are solitary: each female builds her own small nest, often in a tunnel in the ground or inside a hollow plant stem.

Some native bees can do jobs that honeybees cannot. Tomato and blueberry flowers hold their pollen tightly and release it only when shaken. Bumblebees grab these flowers and vibrate their flight muscles rapidly, shaking the pollen loose in a technique called buzz pollination. Honeybees do not do this. Squash bees, meanwhile, begin work at dawn, visiting squash and pumpkin flowers before most honeybees have left the hive.

Native bees face serious threats, including the loss of wildflower habitat and the use of pesticides. Scientists warn that depending too heavily on a single kind of bee is risky: if honeybee colonies are struck by disease, farmers with healthy populations of wild bees will have a backup. Planting native flowers and leaving some bare ground undisturbed are simple ways to help.