Set 1 — two Aesop fables and an informational passage.
One bright morning a crow snatched a fine piece of cheese from an open window and flew up to a high branch to enjoy it.
A hungry fox, passing below, caught the delicious scent and looked up. He wanted that cheese for himself, but he could not climb the tree. So he decided to use his wits instead.
“Good morning, noble Crow,” said the fox sweetly. “How well you look today! Your feathers shine like silk, and your eyes sparkle like jewels. Surely a bird so beautiful must have a voice to match. If you would only sing one note, I would call you the Queen of all the Birds.”
The crow was so flattered that she lifted her head, opened her beak wide, and let out a loud “Caw!” Down tumbled the cheese, straight into the fox's waiting jaws.
“Thank you,” laughed the fox as he trotted away. “In exchange for your cheese, let me give you a piece of advice: never trust a flatterer.”
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Many bats hunt at night, when it is too dark to see well. Yet they can swoop after a tiny insect without ever bumping into a tree. How do they do it? The answer is a special skill called echolocation.
As a bat flies, it makes high squeaks — so high that human ears cannot hear them. These sounds travel out, hit objects, and bounce back as echoes. The bat listens to each echo to learn where things are.
An echo that returns quickly means an object is close. An echo that takes longer means the object is far away. From the echoes, the bat can tell the size, the shape, and even the speed of a flying insect.
Using echolocation, a bat builds a sound 'picture' of the world around it. This is why a bat can catch hundreds of insects in a single night, all in complete darkness.
Some other animals use echolocation too. Dolphins and certain whales send out clicks underwater and listen for the echoes to find food and to swim safely through the deep, dark sea.
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A farmer and his wife once owned a goose that was unlike any other. Each morning, the goose laid a single egg made of pure, shining gold.
The farmer sold the golden eggs one at a time, and soon the family grew rich. But the more money they made, the more they wanted.
“Why should we wait for one egg a day?” said the greedy farmer. “Inside this goose there must be a great lump of gold. If we cut it open, we can take all the gold at once and be rich beyond our dreams.”
So the farmer killed the goose and cut it open. But inside, the goose was just like any other goose. There was no lump of gold at all.
Now the family had no golden eggs and no goose. The farmer sat down and wept, for in his greed he had thrown away the very thing that made him rich.
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Set 2 — a Wizard of Oz excerpt, a Tennyson poem, and an informational passage.
Dorothy lived in the middle of the great Kansas prairies with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em. Their little house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried many miles. The land all around was flat and gray, baked by the hot sun.
One day Uncle Henry stood in the doorway and looked anxiously at the sky, which was even grayer than usual. From the far north came a low wail of the wind. “There's a cyclone coming, Em,” he called to his wife. “I'll look after the stock.”
Aunt Em dropped her work and ran to the door. One glance told her of the danger close at hand. “Quick, Dorothy!” she screamed. “Run for the cellar!” Toto, Dorothy's little dog, jumped out of her arms and hid under the bed, and the girl started to get him.
Just then the house whirled around two or three times and rose slowly through the air. Dorothy felt as if she were going up in a balloon. The north and south winds met where the house stood and made it the exact center of the cyclone.
The great pressure of the wind on every side lifted the house higher and higher, until it was at the very top of the cyclone; and there it stayed and was carried miles and miles away as easily as you could carry a feather.
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He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
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A rainbow is one of nature's most beautiful sights. To make one, you need just two things: sunlight and water droplets floating in the air. That is why rainbows often appear right after a rain shower, when the sun comes back out.
Sunlight may look white, but it is really made of many colors mixed together. When a ray of sunlight passes into a raindrop, the drop bends the light and splits it apart into its separate colors.
The colors always appear in the same order: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Red bends the least, so it sits on the outside of the arc, while violet bends the most and sits on the inside.
To see a rainbow, the sun must be behind you and the rain in front of you. Each person actually sees their very own rainbow, because the light reaching your eyes is slightly different from the light reaching anyone else's.
Rainbows have amazed people for thousands of years. Today we know they are not magic at all, but a wonderful trick of light and water that anyone can understand.
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Set 3 — an Alice in Wonderland excerpt, a Rossetti poem, and a fiction/nonfiction paired set.
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do. Once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”
So she was considering, as well as she could, whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up to pick the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.
There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!” But when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet.
It flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it. Burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.
In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again. The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found she was falling down a very deep well.
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Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
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A dog had been given a fine, meaty bone by a kind butcher. Holding it tightly in his mouth, he trotted home across a narrow footbridge over a stream.
As he crossed, he happened to look down into the calm water. There he saw another dog staring back at him — and that dog seemed to be carrying an even bigger bone!
The greedy dog wanted both bones for himself. He snapped at the other dog to seize its bone. But the moment he opened his mouth, his own bone dropped out, splashed into the stream, and sank out of sight. The dog had been fooled by his own reflection, and now he had nothing at all.
A reflection is what you see when light bounces off a smooth surface and back to your eyes. Still water, like a calm pond or stream, can act like a mirror.
When light hits the smooth top of the water, it bounces straight back. That bounced light carries an image — so you see a copy of whatever is above the water, such as a tree, the sky, or your own face.
If the water is choppy or moving, the surface scatters the light in many directions, and the reflection becomes broken and blurry. That is why you see a clear reflection only when the water is calm and still.
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