FSA - Grade 7 Exemplars

FSA 2012 Grade 7 Exemplars

Reading Comprehension

Reading Passages .......................................................... Sample Responses ......................................................... Exemplars ..................................................................

Page 2 Page 6 Page 8

Shorter Writing

Writing Topic .............................................................. Page 21 Exemplars .................................................................. Page 22

Longer Writing

Writing Topic .............................................................. Page 40 Exemplars .................................................................. Page 41

Numeracy

Question 1 .................................................................. Solutions to Question 1................................................... Exemplars for Question 1................................................ Question 2.................................................................. Solutions to Question 2................................................... Exemplars for Question 2.................................................

Page 70 Page 71 Page 73 Page 85 Page 86 Page 89

Rationales for Exemplars................................................. Page 102

FSA 2012 Exemplars

Grade 7 Reading

FSA 2012 Grade 7 Provincial Exemplars

Page 1

Read this article to learn about futuristic predictions.

Future Visions: Yesterday versus Today

by Valerie Wyatt

Their Tomorrow

Your own personal helicopter. Food in the form of pills. A robot to make your bed. These were some of the far-out predictions people made about the future 50 years ago. These days, we see the future in a vastly different way. How did those predictions go so wrong?

People imagine the future based on what is around them today. Fifty years ago, air travel was becoming popular. Why not more of it, in the form of two-person planes and helicopters? Fast foods, canned or frozen, were speeding up meal preparation. Popping a food pill was the logical next step. As for the bed-making robot...robots were all over the movies. It seemed inevitable that they would roll into the home.

Our Today

Back then, technology was seen as the route to a brighter tomorrow, and new machines played a big part in people's view of the future. Today, on the other hand, we live with the effects of technology. Some of these effects

FSA 2012 Grade 7 Provincial Exemplars

are good--we live longer thanks to medical advances. But others, such as pollution caused by the boom in airplane travel and too many vehicles, have put us on the path to climate change.

Our Tomorrow

Our ideas of the future are more cautious about technology than our great-grandparents' were. We see the dark side as well as the bright. Like them, we base our projections on what we see around us today. They saw personal aircraft because the skies were empty. We imagine renewable fuel cars because the roads are packed with pollutionspewing vehicles. While they saw food pills we see nutraceuticals (noo-trah-SOO-tuh-kuls). Nutraceuticals are food genetically engineered to protect us from disease.

5 As for that robot? Fifty years from now, robots may not only be making beds but also removing your appendix, driving your car, and playing soccer with you. Not only that--they will be smart. In fact, their artificial intelligence

Page 2

may make them smarter than humans.

Nanotechnology may also change our world. It is the technology not of wood and steel but of molecules. The result may lead to super small things, such as microscopic trucks that carry atoms and molecules around in miniature factories, and super strange things, such as clothes that clean themselves or change colour.

Our future predictions have something in common with those of our great-grandparents in that they are based on the familiar. But what about those bad guesses they made (food pills) and wild cards (climate change)? They remind us that making predictions can be, well... un-predictable. What will the future be like? Only time will tell.

"Future Visions: Yesterday versus Today" by Valerie Wyatt. Nelson Literacy. Ed. Lara Caplin.

Nelson Education Limited: Toronto, ON. 2008.

FSA 2012 Grade 7 Provincial Exemplars

Page 3

Read this story to discover a choice one woman made.

The Choice

by W. Hilton-Young

Before Williams went into the future, she bought a camera and a tape recorder. She also learned shorthand1. That night, when all was ready, we made coffee. She might want some -- if and when she came back.

"Good-bye," I said. "Don't stay too long."

"I won't," she said.

I watched her carefully. She hardly seemed to move at all. She was back from her trip within the second she had left. It seemed that way, at least, by our sense of time.

5 We had not been sure how long she would be away. Maybe a minute. Maybe several years. But here she was, as if she had never left.

"Well?" I asked.

"Well," she said, "let's have some coffee."

I poured it out, waiting for her to say something. As I gave her a cup, I said again, "Well?"

"Well, the thing is, I can't remember."

10 "Can't remember? Not a thing?"

She thought for a moment. Then she said sadly, "Not a thing."

"But your notes? The camera? The tape recorder?"

The notebook was empty. The film was still at No. 1, where she had set it. The tape in the tape recorder had not been used.

"But why?" I asked. "How did it happen? Can't you remember anything at all?"

15 "I remember only one thing."

1shorthand: a method of writing ideas quickly

FSA 2012 Grade 7 Provincial Exemplars

Page 4

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download