|Name: _________________________||Period: ___________________|
This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. Who was Lil?
2. What was the Highland Dingle?
3. How many children in Mrs. Zajac's class ate free lunches?
4. About how many pieces of paper did Mrs. Zajac handle daily at school
5. What was Holyoke's primary industry at the turn of the century?
Short Essay Questions
1. What were the work conditions for female teachers of the late 19th and 20th centuries?
2. What happened in the 1970's to the town of Holyoke? How did this affect the town and its economy? What plans did the state and local governments come up with to renew Holyoke?
3. Why did Clarence immediately catch Mrs. Zajac's eye? What were some of his behaviors in the classroom? What did she and her student teacher Miss Hunt notice about Clarence?
4. When and where did Mrs. Zajac have time to grade her social studies papers? What trend did Mrs. Zajac see in her students' performance? Who in particular had made real strides in class and homework? Who had not done so well?
5. In the first chapter, what does the reader learn about Mrs. Zajac? How old is she? How long has she been a teacher? Does she have a family?
6. What subject did Mrs. Zajac's students have on Wednesday afternoons? How was the behavior in the classroom different from other times as the students prepared their Halloween project?
7. What are "cume" folders? Why do teachers have them? What goes into them? How does Mrs. Zajac use the cumes and why?
8. What were Mrs. Zajac's concerns about Pedro? What was his behavior like in class? What plan did she come up with learn more about Pedro?
9. How did the fifth grade class celebrate the Christmas break? What did Mrs. Zajac give each child as a Christmas gift?
10. Clarence continued to be a concern in Mrs. Zajac's class. What kinds of things did Clarence do that were of concern to Mrs. Zajac? How did these behaviors contrast with others in the classroom?
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
Who was Suzanne? What role did she play in Mrs. Zajac's life? Why did the writer tell us about Suzanne?
Essay Topic 2
What role does Al Laudato play in Kidder's book? Is he an important part of Mrs. Zajac's success as a teacher? Why?
Essay Topic 3
Kelly School was the setting for this book. Where was the school? What information did the author give about the history of the school? About the physical plant of the school? What was the ethnic make up of the school? Could this book have been set in a different school in a different city? Why?
This section contains 1,212 words
(approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page)