Read Grade-Level Literary Nonfiction Practice Test
•10 QuestionsRead the biography passage and answer the question.
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?
Read the biography passage and answer the question.
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?