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In 1912, Juliette Gordon Low returned to Savannah with a voice that people sometimes had to lean in to hear. An illness had left her partially deaf, and in crowded rooms she missed words the way others missed steps on a staircase—suddenly, and with a jolt. Yet her quietness was not the same as timidity. Friends noticed that when she could not catch a sentence, she watched faces more carefully, as if reading a second language.

Low had spent years moving between countries, collecting ideas the way some travelers collect postcards. In England she encountered the Boy Scouts, a new organization that treated young people as capable rather than fragile. She admired its emphasis on practical skills and service, but she also saw who was absent: girls, especially those who were restless, stubborn, or poor.

Back in Georgia, she gathered a small group of girls in a carriage house. The first meeting was not grand. There were no uniforms yet, no famous songs. There was only Low’s insistence that girls should learn to tie knots, map trails, and speak in public without apologizing for taking up space. She called them “Girl Guides” at first, borrowing the name, but she reshaped the program to fit American life.

Some local leaders dismissed the idea as a hobby that would fade. Low answered with persistence rather than argument. She wrote letters, visited schools, and listened to parents’ worries. Instead of promising to make girls obedient, she promised to make them useful—to themselves and to their communities. Over time, the organization became the Girl Scouts, and its badge-covered sashes turned into a kind of moving evidence that competence can be taught.

Question: Which detail best supports the inference that Juliette Gordon Low’s leadership relied more on determination than on public approval?

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On the morning of the river cleanup, the water looked innocent from a distance, reflecting the sky like a mirror that didn’t want to admit what it had seen. Up close, the truth crowded the shoreline: plastic bottles wedged in reeds, a tire half-buried in mud, wrappers curled like dead leaves.

Our volunteer group was mostly teenagers earning service hours, but Ms. Sato, the science teacher who organized it, treated the work as more than a requirement. She handed out gloves and grabbers and said, “This is fieldwork. You’re collecting evidence.” Her words changed the atmosphere. Suddenly, each piece of trash felt like a clue in a story about how we live.

I worked beside a boy named Eli who complained constantly, yet he never stopped moving. He poked at the tire with his grabber and muttered that people were disgusting. Ms. Sato overheard and asked him, calmly, what he meant by “people.” Eli glanced at the houses across the water, then at our own pile of bags, and his voice lowered. “I guess…us,” he said.

At the end, we lined the trash bags along the path for the city truck. The row looked like a strange parade, each bag swollen with our habits. I expected to feel proud, but what I felt was responsibility, which is heavier and harder to display. As we walked back to the parking lot, Eli stopped complaining. He stared at the river as if it had become a mirror after all.

Question: What is Ms. Sato’s perspective on the cleanup, based on the passage?

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When Wangari Maathai was a girl in Kenya, she noticed details that many adults stepped around: the way streams ran clear after rain, the way certain trees held the soil in place, the way shade could feel like mercy. Later, as she studied biology, she learned scientific vocabulary for what she already sensed—ecosystems, erosion, sustainability. The words did not replace her childhood observations; they sharpened them.

In the 1970s, Maathai saw that many communities were cutting down trees for firewood and farmland. The loss was not only environmental. Without trees, soil washed away, crops weakened, and women walked farther for wood and water. Problems that looked separate—hunger, poverty, exhaustion—were braided together.

Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, encouraging women to plant trees and earn small incomes for their work. Some leaders dismissed her efforts as too simple to matter, but she argued that simplicity could be strategic. Planting a tree was an action ordinary people could repeat, and repetition is how change becomes visible.

Her activism brought confrontation. She was criticized, threatened, and arrested, yet she continued to speak, insisting that caring for the land was also caring for democracy. In 2004, she received the Nobel Peace Prize. The award recognized not just her environmental work, but her belief that peace is built from daily choices, not only from treaties signed by powerful people.

How do Maathai’s early observations as a child connect to her later impact, according to the passage?

Read the personal essay excerpt and answer the question.

My father used to say that moving was “good practice for adulthood,” as if adulthood were a sport you could train for by repeatedly packing boxes. By the time I reached adolescence, I could wrap dishes in newspaper with my eyes half closed. I could also learn a new school’s hallway map faster than I could learn the names of the people in it.

In every new town, I became an expert in first impressions. I knew how to smile at teachers, how to laugh at jokes I didn’t understand, how to claim I “didn’t mind” sitting alone at lunch. The performance was so polished that even I started to believe it. Yet at night, when the house was quiet, I felt like a book someone kept restarting before the plot could develop.

One afternoon, during our fourth move in five years, I found a shoebox labeled in my mother’s handwriting: “KEEP.” Inside were small leftovers from other lives—ticket stubs, a broken keychain, a birthday card from a friend whose last name I could no longer pronounce. I sat on the floor and held those objects the way you hold proof.

I realized then that the problem wasn’t only leaving. It was becoming someone who expected leaving. Each new beginning trained my brain to stay light, to avoid attachment, to treat friendships like temporary rentals. My father called that “practice,” but it felt more like rehearsal for disappearance.

Question: What does the figurative language in the sentence “I felt like a book someone kept restarting before the plot could develop” suggest about the author’s experience?

Read the narrative nonfiction passage and answer the question.

The wildfire didn’t arrive like a single dramatic moment. It arrived like a rumor that kept becoming more believable. On Monday, the sky looked slightly bruised, and our teacher closed the windows even though it was warm. On Tuesday, ash drifted down like gray confetti, landing on the soccer field and dissolving when you touched it. By Wednesday, the sun was a dull coin behind smoke, and the principal announced we would evacuate after lunch.

At home, my family moved with two different speeds. My little brother sprinted in circles, thrilled by the idea of leaving school early. My mother moved slowly and deliberately, choosing which documents to pack, which photos to grab, which objects were irreplaceable and which were only sentimental. I watched her hands pause over a ceramic bowl my grandmother had made. It was chipped, imperfect, and heavy. My mother wrapped it anyway.

In the car, traffic crawled. People stared straight ahead, as if looking sideways might invite panic. I kept checking the rear window. The smoke looked closer than it should have. When we finally reached the shelter at the fairgrounds, volunteers offered water and blankets with practiced calm. Their calmness was not indifference; it was a kind of courage that made space for everyone else’s fear.

That night, lying on a borrowed cot, I understood why my mother had packed the chipped bowl. Disasters don’t only threaten houses. They threaten the stories that make a house feel like yours.

Question: Which detail best supports the inference that the mother values family history and identity during the evacuation?

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The night the power went out, our apartment building turned into a vertical campground. Doors opened. People leaned into the hallway with flashlights held like cautious questions. Someone on the third floor began to play a harmonica, a thin sound that traveled up the stairwell and made the darkness feel less absolute.

My little brother, Mateo, was seven and furious. His tablet had died mid-game, and he treated the blackout like a personal insult. “Fix it,” he demanded, as if I had a switch hidden in my pocket. I told him the truth—that the whole block was dark—but he stared at me with the disappointment usually reserved for adults.

We climbed to the roof because the air inside felt trapped. Above us, the city’s usual glow had dimmed, and for once the sky was not competing with streetlights. Stars appeared in clusters, shy at first, then bold. Mateo stopped complaining. He leaned against the brick wall and tipped his head back.

I remembered a science unit from school: how light can take years to reach you, how seeing is a kind of time travel. I tried to explain it, but my words sounded too small. Mateo didn’t need a lecture. He needed space to be quiet.

After a while he whispered, “So those stars are old?” His anger had melted into curiosity, like ice turning into something you can drink. I nodded. He was still the same kid who wanted his game back, but now he also held a new thought—one that made his problems look less like cliffs and more like bumps in a road.

Question: What does the comparison “flashlights held like cautious questions” suggest about the people in the hallway?

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Before he became famous for painting enormous murals on public buildings, Diego Rivera was a student who struggled with rules that felt too small for his curiosity. Born in 1886 in Guanajuato, Mexico, he showed artistic talent early, but talent did not make him easy. Teachers described him as brilliant and difficult, a combination that often means a person refuses to accept simple answers.

As a young man, Rivera traveled to Europe, where he studied new styles and watched artists argue about what art should do. Some believed art belonged in museums, protected by silence and wealthy donors. Rivera began to disagree. He saw workers leaving factories with tired shoulders and realized that the people who built cities rarely saw themselves celebrated on the walls of those cities.

When he returned to Mexico after the revolution, the government invited artists to create murals that could educate the public. Rivera painted scenes of laborers, farmers, and Indigenous communities with bold colors and crowded movement. The murals were not quiet decorations; they were statements. In some, he included symbols of oppression—chains, soldiers, towering machines—not because he loved conflict, but because he believed ignoring conflict was another way of choosing a side.

Rivera’s work made him admired and criticized. Some called him a hero of the people. Others called him dangerous. Rivera seemed to accept both reactions as evidence that his paintings were doing their job.

Which statement best explains how the ideas in the third paragraph connect to the author’s portrayal of Rivera’s significance?

Read the memoir excerpt and answer the question.

In seventh grade I joined the debate club for a reason I didn’t admit out loud: I wanted to borrow confidence the way you borrow a book, taking it home until it feels like yours. The first meeting was held in a classroom that smelled like dry-erase markers and old carpet. Posters about “CLAIMS” and “EVIDENCE” hung crookedly, as if even the walls were still learning how to argue.

Our coach, Ms. Patel, handed each of us a topic from a paper bag. Mine said: “School uniforms.” I had opinions, but they were private and messy, the kind you think in the shower and forget to say at lunch. Ms. Patel told us that debate wasn’t about winning by volume; it was about building a bridge between what you believe and what you can prove.

When it was my turn to speak, my mouth went dry. I stared at my notecards, suddenly suspicious of my own handwriting. A boy across the circle tapped his pencil, a small metronome counting my panic. I managed to say one sentence, then another. They came out stiff, like a robot trying to sound human.

Afterward, Ms. Patel didn’t compliment me. She asked, “Where did you hesitate?” The question was sharp, but not cruel. It made me replay my own voice and notice the places where I had tried to hide behind big words.

Walking home, I realized something uncomfortable: I wasn’t afraid of being wrong. I was afraid of being seen trying.

What is the author’s perspective on confidence in this excerpt?

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When Mary Anning was a teenager in the early 1800s, her classroom was the crumbling cliffs of Lyme Regis, a small town on England’s southern coast. After storms, the sea tore at the rock and exposed strange shapes—curved ribs, spiraled shells, teeth that looked too sharp for any living fish. Mary and her brother searched the beaches for “curiosities” to sell, because their family needed the money. Yet Mary’s attention was not only economic; it was investigative. She noticed patterns in the layers of stone and began to predict where fossils might appear, as if she were reading a complicated book written in mud and time.

In 1811, she helped uncover a nearly complete skeleton of an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile that looked like a dolphin designed by a different imagination. Scientists in London debated what such creatures meant. Some insisted the bones belonged to animals still living somewhere in the unexplored world. Others began to accept a more unsettling idea: extinction. Mary did not attend university, and she was often excluded from scientific societies because she was a working-class woman. Still, experts relied on her skill, buying specimens she had prepared with careful tools and steadier patience than many professionals.

What made her work remarkable was not only what she found, but how her discoveries pressured people to revise their beliefs. Each fossil was a confrontation with the past, evidence that Earth had changed dramatically and that life had vanished and reappeared in new forms. Mary’s name was not always printed beside the theories her finds supported, but the cliffs kept offering proof, and she kept listening.

Question: Which statement best describes the author’s purpose in this biography passage?​​

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When Cesar Chavez was a child, his family lost their farm during the Great Depression. Afterward they became migrant workers, traveling for seasonal jobs and living with the constant uncertainty of being temporary—temporary housing, temporary wages, temporary respect. Chavez attended many schools, sometimes for only a few weeks at a time. Teachers marked him absent when he was simply somewhere else, following work.

As an adult, Chavez did not describe this past to gain sympathy. He described it to explain a pattern: when people are treated as replaceable, they begin to believe they must accept anything. Working in the fields, he saw laborers paid too little and exposed to pesticides, yet afraid to speak up because a complaint could mean losing the next job.

Chavez helped organize farmworkers by emphasizing discipline and community. He supported boycotts and marches, but he also insisted on nonviolence, even when anger would have been easier. To him, nonviolence was not weakness; it was a strategy that made the movement harder to dismiss. It required participants to control their impulses, to act with purpose rather than simply react.

Chavez’s leadership was imperfect and sometimes criticized, but his influence remains. He pushed the country to notice the people who harvested its food and to consider whether dignity should depend on how easily a worker can be replaced.

Question: Which inference is best supported by the passage?