Reading Aloud Fluently
SL.3.5
Read the text, then answer the questions.
The Museum Key (a scene from a play)
SCENE TWO. The museum store room. Night. Boxes everywhere. A single desk lamp. PRIYA: (whispering) It was here on Tuesday. On this shelf. JON: You are sure it was this shelf? PRIYA: I dusted it. I am sure. JON: (lifting a lid) Then somebody moved it after Tuesday. PRIYA: Or before Tuesday, and I dusted the empty space. (Pause. JON puts the lid down slowly.) JON: That is worse. PRIYA: I know.
- 1. What is the purpose of the first four lines, before anyone speaks?
- 2. "I dusted the empty space" — what does Priya mean?
- 3. Quote the stage direction that tells you Jon is shaken.
Conker
First stanza: Inside the green and spiny case, packed in a lining soft as silk, it waits all summer in the dark and grows the colour of stained milk. Second stanza: Then autumn cracks the case in two. It falls. It hits the path and shines so hard and bright and newly made you cannot walk past it. Nobody can. Third stanza: By Sunday it is dull and cracked and lighter than it was before — a small brown stone inside a pocket, and no one wants it any more.
- 1. How many stanzas does this poem have, and what does each one cover?
- 2. Which words show how the conker looks when it first falls?
- 3. "Soft as silk" — what is being compared, and why?
LessonPrint · SL.3.5 · Set 15 · free to copy for classroom use