6th Grade ELA Final Exam (GT) Study Guide

To Helen								
by Edgar Allan Poe

Helen, thy beauty is to me
	Like those Nicéan barks1 of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
	The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
5		To his own native shore

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
	Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Thy Naiad2 airs have brought me home
	To the glory that was Greece,
10		And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
	How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
	Ah, Psyche3, from the regions which
15	Are Holy Land

________________
1	Nicean barks: sailing ships from, or made in, Nicaea, an ancient city.
2	Naiad: water nymphs in the shape of young women.
3	Psyche: a beautiful woman who was loved by the god Cupid.

•	Text Structure
•	Rhythm
•	Alliteration
•	Stanzas
•	Author’s Purpose

Revising and Editing
(1) During the summer, I spent three weeks in June visiting my grandmother in Pennsylvania. (2) I went on a train to Philadelphia. (3) The trip was four hours long. (4) I got tired, so I took a nap. (5) I looked out the window. (6) That was after I woke up. (7) I saw small towns and farms, and I enjoyed seeing people, houses, and cows. (8) When the train got to the station, my grandmother was waiting, and we drove to her house in the country.
(9) She lives in a small white house with a beautiful flower-filled yard. (10) She also has a huge garden. (11) She grows strawberries and lots of vegetables in it. (12) There are apple trees near the garden, and I like to climb them. (13) Sometimes, on warm days, I can sit high up in the branches, where I read a book for hours. (14) When I do this, my grandmother never tells me to get down.
(15) One nice day during the middle of my visit, after we'd picked a lot of strawberries, I got a very good idea. (16) I set up an old card table and a cheap folding chair near the narrow busy road in front of the house. (17) I put up a sign that advertised strawberries at a reasonable price. (18) I put the delicious fresh berries into some little wooden boxes Grandma had. (19) People could safely pull into the driveway if they wanted to get off the road to stop.
(20) Before the sun went down, I had sold twenty dollars' worth of strawberries! (21) Then I took the card table and chair back indoors. (22) We still had strawberries in the refrigerator; I hadn't tried to sell all of them. (23) I'm not foolish enough not to have saved some for us.
(24) When I told Grandma, she was very happy that none of the berries had been wasted. (25) She was also glad I had made some money selling strawberries. (26) We decided to use the money I'd made to have some fun, and we did. (27) We dressed in clean comfortable clothes and went to an exciting interesting movie. (28) I enjoyed the whole day!

•	Compound Sentences
•	Subordinate Clauses
•	Punctuation
•	Simple Sentences

Analyzing Text: Informational Text

In In the Shadow of Man, researcher Jane Goodall describes her experiences observing chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania.

from In the Shadow of Man
by Jane Goodall

1		Sometimes at the beginning of a storm a chimpanzee would shelter under an overhanging trunk or tangle of vegetation, but then, when the rain began to drip through, he usually emerged and just sat in the open, hunched and looking miserable. Small infants appeared to fare the best in a heavy storm. Quite often I saw old Flo, who of all the females was least afraid of me at that time, sitting hunched over two-year-old Fifi. At the end of a deluge Fifi would crawl from her mother's embrace looking completely dry. Flo's son Figan, about four years older than Fifi, often swung wildly through the tree on such occasions, dangling from one hand and kicking his legs, leaping from branch to branch, jumping up and down above Flo, until she was showered with debris and she hunched even lower to avoid the twigs that lashed her face. It was a good way of keeping his blood warm—rather like the wild rain display with which older males frequently greeted the start of heavy rain.
2		As the weeks went by I found that I could usually get closer to a group of chimpanzees when it was cold and wet than when the weather was dry. It was as though they were too fed up with the conditions to bother about me. One day I was moving silently through the dripping forest. Overhead the rain pattered onto the leaves and all around it dripped from leaf to leaf to the ground. The smell of rotten wood and wet vegetation was pungent; under my hands the tree trunks were cold and slippery and alive. I could feel the water trickling through my hair and running warmly into my neck. I was looking for a group of chimps I had heard before the rain began.
3		Unexpectedly, only a few yards ahead of me, I saw a black shape hunched up on the ground with its back to me. I hunched down onto the ground myself: the chimp hadn't seen me. For a few minutes there was silence save for the pattering of the rain, and then I heard a slight rustle and a soft hoo to my right. Slowly I turned my head, but saw nothing in the thick undergrowth. When I looked back, the black shape that had been in front of me had vanished. Then came a sound from above. I looked up and there saw a large male directly overhead: it was Goliath. He stared down at me with his lips tensed and very slightly shook a branch. I looked away, for a prolonged stare can be interpreted as a threat. I heard another rustle to my left, and when I looked I could just make out the black shape of a chimp behind a tangle of vines. Ahead I saw two eyes staring toward me and a large black hand gripping a hanging liana. Another soft hoo, this time from behind. I was surrounded.
4		All at once Goliath uttered a long drawn-out wraaaa, and I was showered with rain and twigs as he threatened me, shaking the branches. The call was taken up by the other dimly seen chimps. It is one of the most savage sounds of the African forests, second only to the trumpeting scream of an enraged elephant. All my instincts bade me flee, but I forced myself to stay, trying to appear uninterested and busy eating some roots from the ground. The end of the branch above hit my head. With a stamping and slapping of the ground a black shape charged through the undergrowth ahead, veering away from me at the last minute and running at a tangent into the forest. I think I expected to be torn to pieces. I do not know how long I crouched there before I realized that everything was still and silent again, save for the drip-drip of the raindrops. Cautiously I looked around. The black hand and the glaring eyes were no longer there; the branch where Goliath had been was deserted; all the chimpanzees had gone. Admittedly, my knees shook when I got up, but there was the sense of exhilaration that comes when danger has threatened and left one unharmed—and the chimpanzees were surely less afraid of me.

Excerpt from In the Shadow of Man by Jane Goodall. Text copyright © 1971 by Jane Goodall and Hugan van Lawick. Text revisions copyright © 1988 by Jane Goodall. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company and Maven Productions Inc.
•	Characteristics of a memoir
•	Text Features
•	Purpose of a heading
•	Summarize
•	Context Clues
•	Inferences
•	Text Structure

Analyzing Text: Informational Text

from To the Top of Everest
by Laurie Skreslet with Elizabeth MacLeod

1		When I arrived back at Base Camp from Kunde, I was told the icefall had been closed. I couldn't go through? Well, maybe—maybe not. I radioed Bill.
2		"Laurie, it's too dangerous. Stay in Base Camp!" Bill barked. "Do NOT—"
3		I flicked off the radio. That wasn't what I wanted to hear. After a year and a half of working on this expedition, I had too much energy invested to sit at the bottom of Everest. I'd gained a lot of experience in my years of climbing. I knew I could make an important contribution to the climbers struggling high on the mountain. It would all be wasted if I waited in Base Camp. So I took the risk.
4		Next morning I shouldered my pack and set off. Base Camp had radioed Bill, and he did the only thing he could—he ordered that no one come with me. Bill also insisted that I radio Base Camp every time I crossed a crevasse. If I fell, I was still on my own—the radio call would just let them know where to find my body.
5		At first, the climb wasn't too bad—I'd done it many times before, and with a heavier pack. The route was in much worse shape than my last time there, three weeks before, but most ladders were usable. The Icefall was quiet and the wind light.
6		Then I came to a crevasse about 3.5 m (12 ft.) wide. There was a ladder across it, but the ice had shifted since it had been put in place. Now the bridge ended 1.5 m (5 ft.) from the far wall. On my side, the end of the ladder was frozen into the ice, but the other end hung 30 m (100 ft.) above the bottom of the crevasse.
7		No problem, I thought, I'll just find another place to cross.
8		For more than an hour, I searched desperately, but there was no other place. I had to admit defeat. Slowly, I started down to Base Camp.
9		Then I stopped. Did you give that your best? I asked myself. Yes, I thought. But then I asked, did you give it more than your best?
10		No, I had to answer. More than my best was to go back and jump from the ladder to the far side. I knew the impossible is often the untried. I couldn't leave without trying, so back I went.
11		I decided to use the handrail ropes that were still there, adding new anchors and Petzl ascenders pointing both forward and back. I figured I had a fifty-fifty chance of making it across.
12		The ladder bobbed up and down as I edged my way out. At the end of the ladder, I focused all my concentration—and jumped.
13		Thwack! My ice pick bit into the ice on the lip of the crevasse. It held. I dug my crampons into the icy wall and used all my strength to pull myself up.
14		As I lay gasping on the far side, I realized that something powerful had happened. I seemed to be seeing things differently—everything was clearer and colors more vivid. It was like a different world. In making that leap, I'd let go not only of the ladder, but of some of my fears, too. I knew then that things would work out for me as long as I kept giving more than my best.
15		As I climbed to Camp One and on toward Camp Two, I thought about Bill. What would happen when I had to explain face-to-face why I'd disobeyed his order to stay in Base Camp? Would he allow me to keep climbing?
16		He was right there when I arrived.
17		"Laurie!" Bill shouted. Then he smiled and said, "It's great you're here!"
18		"Huh?" I said, stunned by his good humor.
19		"Look," said Bill, "four people have died. If I'd asked you to come up and something had happened to you, I couldn't bear to have another death on my conscience. I had to tell you to stay put." Bill paused. "But I knew you'd come up no matter what. So, welcome. I need you here."

Excerpt from To the Top of Everest by Laurie Skreslet and Elizabeth MacLeod. Text copyright © 2001 by Laurie Skreslet. Reprinted by permission of Kids Can Press, Ltd., Toronto, Canada.

•	Theme
•	Punctuation   (When to use commas, dashes, & parentheses)
•	Prediction
•	Text Structure
•	Imagery/Descriptive details
•	What is a memoir?
•	Central Idea
•	What is an expository essay?
•	Writing Styles
•	What is precise language?