Page 121 - SpringBoard_ELD_Grade7_Flipbook

aCTiViTY 1.3
continued
My notes
interpret the Text using Close Reading
5 “What is it?” I yelled to Joey. “An earthquake?”
6 “No! Sinkhole, man! It’s a sinkhole! It’s opening up under the field. Look at 19.”
7 I looked and saw the entire portable being swallowed up by the mud, its roof
now where its porch steps should be. I yelled, “That’s my math class!”
8 Joey shouted back over the din. “They must all be trapped in there!”
9 I didn’t even think about it. I yelled back, “Come on.”
10 We ditched my umbrella and jumped out of the way as the first panicked wave
reached the building. We pushed around the bottleneck of screaming kids forming at the door. Stepping carefully we sloshed and fought our way through the mud to Portable 19.
11 We joined some eighth graders in a kind of bucket brigade extending from the field down into the sinkhole. They were grabbing the hands of the kids who were trapped in the portable and pulling them up, step-by-step, to the edge of the hole. Some of those guys must have been ten feet below ground level at this point, and the sinkhole was still deepening and spreading. The mud continued to swirl around us in a rapid clockwise motion.
12 Empty of kids, Portable 16 fell right over, roof first, into the far end of the hole. Portables 20 and 21 were balanced on the rim of the crater, about to go.
13 Joey and I dug our heels into the mud about halfway down toward the bottom of the hole. We pulled and grabbed at kids as they made their way up the slippery incline to the top. Some of them were so frightened that they didn’t want to let go of us, but we pushed them along anyway, up to the next guys. I lost my balance twice and fell into the mud, but I managed to right myself quickly. My glasses were so caked with mud that I could no long see anything clearly. I must have pulled twenty kids up before I heard Mr. Ward’s voice yell, “That’s it! That’s everybody! Let’s get out of here!”
14 Those of us in the middle of the line helped the guys from the bottom to climb out. Then they pulled us up. I heard Mr. Ward yell again, “There go 17 and 18!” and I heard the sounds of Portables 17 and 18 splitting apart. The whooshing was getting louder, and I felt afraid for the first time, afraid that we might all get sucked down and drown in the mud. We moved out in a tight group, holding on to each other through the field of moving slop and splintered boards.
98 SpringBoard® English Language Development grade 7
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