Name: Date:

from Silent Spring

Rachel Carson

FIRST READ: Comprehension

Identify the choice that best answers the question.

1. As described in the selection from Silent Spring, what is the town like before
everything begins to change? Choose two options.
a. prosperous
b. unhappy
c. beautiful
d. crowded
e. troubled

2. In the selection from Silent Spring, why are doctors in the town puzzled?
a. More children are being born with birth defects.
b. People are reacting more violently to insect stings.
c. People are being attacked more often by wild animals.
d. More people are becoming sick from new kinds of illnesses.

3. What is most likely the cause of the great changes that happen to the town in
the selection from Silent Spring?
a. pesticides
b. radiation
c. bacteria
d. floods

4. In the selection from Silent Spring, how do animal populations change after the
town changes?
a. Animal populations mostly stay the same.
b. Birds are still plentiful, but most insects die.
c. Most birds disappear, but farm animals are fine.
d. Animal life in general disappears or does poorly.

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 GRADE 7 • UNIT 4 • SELECTION TEST

FROM SILENT SPRING BY RACHEL CARSON

Name: Date:

5. In the selection from Silent Spring, how do plants change after the town
changes?
a. Most plants become overgrown and weedy.
b. Some plants turn into a white powder.
c. Many plants wither and die.
d. Most plants burn in a fire.

FIRST READ: Concept Vocabulary

Identify the choice that best answers the question.

6. What would a blight most likely do to a farmer’s crops?

a. make them more plentiful
b. allow them to sell for a profit
c. help them to ripen sooner
d. cause them to rot or die

7. Which of these words tells how a person with maladies is most likely to feel?
a. ill
b. silly
c. angry
d. embarrassed

8. Which sentence best illustrates the meaning of deserted?

a. A caravan of traders moved slowly across the hot sand.
b. Late at night, not a soul was to be seen on Roosevelt Avenue.
c. We decided to wait and see the movie when Max was feeling better.
d. The beach was so crowded that we had trouble finding a place to sit.

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 GRADE 7 • UNIT 4 • SELECTION TEST

FROM SILENT SPRING BY RACHEL CARSON

Name: Date:

CLOSE READ: Analyze the Text

Identify the choice that best answers the question.

9. The following question has two parts. Answer Part A first, and then Part B.

Part A From the details in the selection from Silent Spring, what can you
conclude about the town before the changes take place?
a. The town attracts visitors who enjoy outdoor activities.
b. The town is full of simple, poor, hard-working people.
c. The town is a settlement for recent immigrants.
d. The town is located in an industrial area.

Part B Which of the following quotations from Silent Spring best supports the
answer to Part A?
a. There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to
live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a
checkerboard of prosperous farms....
b. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half
hidden in the mists of the fall mornings.
c. The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its
bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring
and fall people traveled from great distances to observe them. Others came
to fish the streams....
d. So it had been from the days many years ago when the first settlers raised
their houses, sank their wells, and built their barns.

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 GRADE 7 • UNIT 4 • SELECTION TEST

FROM SILENT SPRING BY RACHEL CARSON

Name: Date:

10. The following question has two parts. Answer Part A first, and then Part B.

Part A In the selection from Silent Spring, who or what is responsible for the
white powder that has fallen on the town and its surroundings?
a. an accumulation of fallout from nuclear testing
b. blossoms from fruit trees growing nearby
c. a sudden snowstorm in early spring
d. humans living in or near the town

Part B Which of the following quotations from Silent Spring best supports the
answer to Part A?
a. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with
fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of
bloom drifted above the green fields.
b. Some evil spell had settled on the community . . .
c. . . . some weeks before it had fallen like snow upon the roofs and the
lawns, the fields and the streams.
d. No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this
stricken world. The people had done it themselves.

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 GRADE 7 • UNIT 4 • SELECTION TEST

FROM SILENT SPRING BY RACHEL CARSON

Name: Date:

11. The following question has two parts. Answer Part A first, and then Part B.

Part A From the details in the selection from Silent Spring, what do you
conclude is the author’s main purpose in writing?
a. to record farm practices and statistics for a farming magazine
b. to warn people about a dangerous practice
c. to frighten readers with a tale of mystery and horror
d. to describe her home town as part of her autobiography

Part B Which of the following quotations from Silent Spring best supports the
answer to Part A?
a. Along the roads, laurel, viburnum and alder, great ferns and wildflowers
delighted the traveler’s eye through much of the year.
b. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept
the flocks of chickens, the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere
was the shadow of death.
c. There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among
adults but even among children, who would be stricken suddenly while at
play and die within a few hours.
d. A grim specter has crept upon us almost unnoticed, and this imagined
tragedy may easily become a stark reality we all shall know.

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 GRADE 7 • UNIT 4 • SELECTION TEST

FROM SILENT SPRING BY RACHEL CARSON

Name: Date:

CLOSE READ: Analyze Craft and Structure

Identify the choice that best answers the question.

12. In this sentence from Silent Spring, to which of the five senses does the
imagery most strongly appeal?
Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the
mists of the fall mornings.

a. hearing and touch

b. sight and hearing
c. touch and taste
d. smell and sight

13. Which set of words in this description from Silent Spring has the greatest
negative connotations?
Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks
of chickens, the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was the shadow
of death.

a. evil, sickened, died, death

b. spell, community, shadow
c. settled, mysterious, everywhere
d. swept, flocks, chickens, cattle, sheep

14. Which phrase best describes the mood established in these sentences from
Silent Spring?
There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example—where had they gone? Many
people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards
were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled
violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices.

a. mysterious and frightening

b. hectic and confusing
c. sad and regretful
d. bitter and angry

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 GRADE 7 • UNIT 4 • SELECTION TEST

FROM SILENT SPRING BY RACHEL CARSON

Name: Date:

15. The following question has two parts. Answer Part A first, and then Part B.

Part A Which of these central ideas does Carson develop in the selection from
Silent Spring by using word choices with negative connotations?
a. Life in and near the town is being destroyed.
b. People often foolishly destroy what they love most.
c. Important changes can occur in a matter of moments.
d. Farmers are having trouble keeping insects off their crops.

Part B Which of the following quotations from Silent Spring best supports the
answer to Part A?
a. Even in winter the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds
came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising
above the snow.
b. On the farms the hens brooded, but no chicks hatched. The farmers
complained that they were unable to raise any pigs—the litters were small
and the young survived only a few days.
c. In the gutters under the eaves and between the shingles of the roofs, a
white granular powder still showed a few patches; some weeks before it
had fallen like snow upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and streams.
d. I know of no community that has experienced all the misfortunes I
describe. Yet every one of these disasters has actually happened
somewhere, and many real communities have already suffered a
substantial number of them.

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT: Word Study

Identify the choice that best answers the question.
16. What is one meaning of the Old English suffix -ness?
a. the quality of being
b. the opposite of
c. the study of
d. to become

17. What happens to the adjective sick if you add the suffix -ness to it?
a. It turns into a verb meaning “to become sick.”
b. It turns into a noun meaning “the study of being sick.”
c. It turns into a noun meaning “the condition of being sick.”
d. It remains an adjective but now means “the opposite of being sick.”

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 GRADE 7 • UNIT 4 • SELECTION TEST

FROM SILENT SPRING BY RACHEL CARSON

Name: Date:

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT: Conventions

Identify the choice that best answers the question.
18. Why can this sentence be said to illustrate the indicative mood?
Insects are often harmful to farm crops.

a. It states a condition contrary to fact.

b. It makes a request or a demand.
c. It expresses a statement of fact.
d. It expresses a wish or a hope.

19. Which of these sentences uses the subjunctive mood?

a. The bird became ill.
b. It could not fly anymore.
c. The water that it drank made it sick.
d. I wish that the bird were healthy again.

20. Which sentence has a correct verb form in the subjunctive mood?
a. I insist that the town stops using that dangerous product to kill
mosquitoes.
b. I demand that the town use a less dangerous means of killing them.
c. If I was mayor, I would pass a law against that dangerous product.
d. If my cousin was at today’s town meeting, she would agree.

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