Grade 7: Reading Selection

The Bread Lesson My dad has watermelon-size biceps, a neck like an inner tube, and enormous,
muscular hands that make him seem like he’s always wearing baseball mitts. He doesn’t seem like the
kind of guy who would bake great bread, but he is and he does. Every Saturday he puts on his chef’s
apron, rolls up his sleeves, breaks out a bag of flour, and produces two loaves of homemade bread.
When he’s done, the whole house smells delicious, and I can’t wait for a hot slice smothered with
yellow, melting butter. The rest of the week, Dad is a car mechanic, which involves lots of heavy lifting,
tightening, unscrewing, shoving, shaking, yanking, and banging. People tend to think of their cars as
metallic members of the family, so there’s lots of pressure on Dad to make sure pumps pump, steering
steers, and brakes brake. The shop where Dad works is understaffed, so he’s under a lot of stress.
Sometimes I worry he’s going to overheat and blow a gasket or something, like some old car. I think
Dad began baking bread to help him relax. I see him in the kitchen, working on a spongy hunk of
dough—punching and pounding it into submission. I’ve been feeling kind of stressed out myself since
I found out I didn’t qualify for the swim team. Now I’ll have to wait a whole year to try out again; that
might as well be a million years. Plus, I’m taking some tough classes this year, and my best friend
moved away. I think Dad knew I was feeling pressure. He sat next to me on the sofa last Saturday and
asked me how things were going. I said OK, even though I didn’t feel OK at all. He looked at me for a
moment, then he said it was time for me to help. He got up from the sofa and headed to the kitchen.

I couldn’t imagine what help I could offer. Still, I followed right behind him. Once we were

Grade 10: Reading Selection

"The Story of An Hour"

Kate Chopin (1894)

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as
gently as possible the news of her husband's death.

It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half
concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the
newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name
leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second
telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept
its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the
storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.

There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down
by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new
spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his
wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless
sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one
above the other in the west facing her window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob
came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its
dreams.

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength.
But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those
patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent
thought.

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not
know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward
her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was
approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two
white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped
her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under hte breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare
and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses
beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted
perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when
she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon
her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to
come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in
welcome.

There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would
be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they
have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made
the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the
unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly
recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission.
"Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise?
For heaven's sake open the door."

"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open
window.

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts
of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only
yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in
her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist,
and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.

Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little
travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the
accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at
Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.
Name: ________________________________ Grade/Section: __________________
(Pangalan) (Baitang/Pangkat)
School: Sampaloc National High School Teacher: ________________________
Date: Pre-Test: __________________________
(Petsa) (Panimulang Pagtataya)
Post-Test: _________________________
(Panapos na Pagtataya)

Pre – Test
(Panimulang Pagtataya)
Types of Miscues
(Uri ng Mali) Miscue # of Miscuee Major Self-Corrected
(Salitang may mali) (Bilang ng Salitang may (Sariling Pagwawasto)
Mali)
Miscue
(Binagong
Kahulugan)

Mispronunciation
(Maling Bigkas)

Substitution
(Pagpapalit)

Insertion
(Pagsisingit)

Omission
(Pagkakaltas)

Reversal
(Paglilipat)

Repetition
(Pag-uulit)
Refusal to
Pronounce
(Pagtangging
Bumasa)

Total (Kabuuan)

Frustration Instructional Independent Non-reader

Reading Level
(Antas sa Pagbasa)
(Pagkabigo) (Pampagkatuto) (Malaya) (Di-makabasa)