Local ssessment Item ank Reading Grade 5 Informational Text ssessment 7 Student Name: ate: This assessment is designed to provide information about reading comprehension skills. It contains a reading passage with multiple choice, short answer, and constructed response items. Read the passage and then mark the bubble with the correct answer on the multiple choice items. Write responses to the short answer and constructed response items in the box provided. Refer back to the passage as necessary. You may mark up the passage in any way that is helpful in answering the items.
Read this passage about bees. Then answer the questions that follow. eekeeping asics Michael Priestley 7 Open a jar of golden honey. Spread some on a slice of toast. Take a bite and enjoy its special sweetness. There's nothing else quite like it! Where does honey come from? ees make it, right? ut wait! ees are insects. They don't set up little factories for making honey and putting it in jars, do they? What's the real story behind the honey we eat? Since ancient times, people have known that bees make a delicious, sweet food. To get it, people would search for a hive of wild bees and steal the honey. Then some people figured out that they could get honey more easily if they made hives for bees to live in. They became beekeepers. The first hives were probably hollow logs or clay pots turned on their sides. Later, in about 1500, farmers in Europe began building straw beehives that looked like baskets turned upside down. Farmers from Europe brought honeybees with them to merica in the 1600s. round 1850, an merican beekeeper invented a better kind of hive called the hanging movable-frame beehive. It looks like a stack of boxes. Inside are wooden frames where bees build wax honeycombs for storing their honey. This is the kind of hive that most beekeepers use today. The amazing thing about a beehive is how much it actually is like a little factory for making honey. Each hive is home to a colony of as many as 60,000 bees. colony has one queen that lays eggs. Other bees have different jobs, such as building the honeycomb, keeping it clean, feeding the young, or making honey. Some bees are guards that protect the hive. If a guard thinks you are a danger to the colony, it will sting you. Honey is made from nectar, a sweet liquid inside flowers. bee sucks nectar from a flower and then brings it back to the hive. wax-making bee places the nectar in a honey cell. Other bees add more and more nectar to the honey cell. The nectar is mostly water when it is first brought to the hive. "House bees" fan their wings over the cell to remove the water. s the water evaporates, the nectar changes into honey. When the honey in a cell is ready, the bees cover it with a wax cap. eekeepers give the bees several months to fill the honeycombs in a hive. ees must gather nectar from more than a million flowers to make just one pound of honey! When the honey is ready to harvest, beekeepers wear special clothes that cover their bodies completely. Otherwise, they would surely be stung many times as they pull frames filled with honey from the hive. Informational Text ssessment 7 1
9 Using special tools, beekeepers can extract the honey without breaking the honeycomb. They do this so that the bees will not need to rebuild the honeycomb. When the beekeeper puts the frames back into the hive, the bees will start filling them with honey again. No bee can make honey alone. It takes a large team of very hard workers to get the job done. We could learn a lot from these little creatures about working together and getting things done. 1 Look at the box containing words from the article. honeybees beekeepers honeycomb 2 The job of the queen bee is to sting enemies. lay eggs. feed the young. make honey. Which word best fits in the box? beehives factories flowers creatures 3 Why is the hanging movable-frame beehive more useful to beekeepers than other types? Use details from two or more paragraphs to support your answer. 2 Informational Text ssessment 7
4 In paragraph 7, which word could be used in place of cap? hat door jar top 5 What is nectar? Use details from the article to explain your answer. Informational Text ssessment 7 3
6 ccording to the passage, what do beekeepers do first when they harvest honey? put on special suits pull the frames out of the hive use special tools to avoid breaking the honeycomb fan the cells to remove water 9 In paragraph 9, the word extract means taste. view. remove. improve. 10 Which would be the best subtitle for the last paragraph? 7 Which step in making honey comes first? House bees fan their wings over a cell. ees put nectar in a cell. ees collect nectar from flowers. Water in the nectar evaporates. How to Make Honey Lonely Work ute Little reatures Good Example 8 What causes the water in nectar to evaporate? the heat from the bodies of many house bees air from the movement of the bees wings the wax placed over the nectar in a cell wooden frames in the beehives 4 Informational Text ssessment 7
11 Why does it take a team to make honey? Use details from the passage to explain your answer. Informational Text ssessment 7 5
12 Which statement is a fact? 14 What does the picture show? There s nothing else quite like honey. a hive made by bees ees make a delicious, sweet food. one of the first hives made by people It is amazing how much a beehive is like a factory. a hive invented by European farmers around 1500 s many as 60,000 bees can live in one colony. a hive invented in merica around 1850 13 In this passage, italics are used to set off which of these? 15 The author s main purpose in writing this article was to titles of books on the subject of beekeeping explain to readers how honey is made and harvested. quotations by beekeeping experts persuade readers to try beekeeping. technical terms related to beekeeping subheadings about beekeeping entertain readers with a story about his life as a beekeeper inform readers about different uses for honey. 6 Informational Text ssessment 7