Two Texts, One Tide Pool
Two short texts about the same tide pool sit side by side on the test.
Text 1 (a story): "Nia stepped onto the wet rock and gasped. The tide pool was a jewelry box, every shell a coin of light. A hermit crab dragged its borrowed shell across the bottom. Nia wanted to stay until the water came back, but her grandfather tapped his watch."
Text 2 (an article): "A tide pool is a small pool of water left behind when the ocean tide goes out. Many animals live there, including hermit crabs, sea stars, and anemones. Hermit crabs do not grow their own shells. They find empty snail shells and move in. When a crab grows too big, it looks for a larger shell. Tide pool animals must survive waves, sun, and hungry birds until the tide returns."
A question asks: "Which idea is supported by both texts?" The choices are A. Hermit crabs use shells made by other animals. B. Nia's grandfather is impatient. C. Tide pools look like jewelry. D. Sea stars and anemones live in tide pools.
1. Which choice is supported by both texts, and what checking routine keeps a reader from choosing an answer that is true in only one text?
Read the worked answer
A. Text 1 says the hermit crab dragged its borrowed shell. Text 2 explains the borrowing: crabs find empty snail shells and move in.
Use a two-finger check. For each choice, put one finger on Text 1 and one on Text 2 and hunt for the idea in both. If either text is silent, cross the choice out.
- B is only in Text 1, and it is a guess - tapping a watch shows he is ready to go, not that he is unkind.
- C is only in Text 1, and it is a comparison, not a fact.
- D is only in Text 2; the story never mentions sea stars.
Notice that the two texts use different words for the same idea - borrowed versus find empty snail shells. Test writers paraphrase on purpose, so match ideas, not exact words.
2. Explain what "The tide pool was a jewelry box, every shell a coin of light" means and what a reader taking it literally would misunderstand. Why would this sentence be a poor choice for a science report about tide pools?
Read the worked answer
It is a comparison, not a fact. Nia is saying the pool glittered and seemed precious - shells catching light like something valuable. The word gasped right before it tells you the feeling behind the comparison.
A literal reader goes looking for an actual box and actual coins. That reader will decide the sentence is false, when it was never making a factual claim. The comparison asks you to picture shine and color, not to check whether coins exist.
It would be poor in a science report because a report needs observations a reader could verify: how big the pool is, which animals live there, when the tide returns. "A jewelry box" tells us about Nia, not about the pool. On the test, ask who is talking and why - a character's feelings or a scientist's facts.
3. How do you know Text 1 is told from outside the character, and what would change if Nia told the story herself?
Read the worked answer
Text 1 names Nia and says her grandfather and she - the narrator stands outside and reports what Nia does and feels. The narrator knows Nia wanted to stay, so it is an outside narrator who can still see inside her head, which is common in third-person stories.
If Nia told it, the pronouns would change: "I stepped onto the wet rock... my grandfather tapped his watch." The events would be the same, but the telling would sound different - Nia could explain why she gasped instead of leaving the reader to figure it out from the jewelry-box comparison. She might also be less fair to her grandfather, since we would only get her side.
Point-of-view questions reward the pronoun hunt plus one sentence about what that narrator can and cannot know.