ESL 2 Practice
Mid-Term:
Reading Comprehension: Read Meals on Wheels, then
answer the multiple-choice questions,
complete a skim and take notes, and write a paragraph to answer the open-ended
question.
Meals on Wheels
By Nilanjana
Bhowmick/Vrindaban, with reporting by Andrea Delbanco
India is home to more hungry children than
any other country. A school-lunch program feeds 120 million students there.
Narasimha
Das is on his way to feed 169,379 hungry children. Das is in charge of a
kitchen in Vrindaban. The town is about a three-hour drive from India's
capital, New Delhi. Das gets to work at 3:00 a.m. Thirty men are already
working with wheat flour and dough. They will make tens of thousands of rounds
of bread. It will be brought to 1,516 schools in and around Vrindaban.
A Growing Problem
Going
to school is difficult for more than 13 million children in India. They must go
to work instead, or go hungry. That's why India launched the Mid-Day Meal
Scheme, the largest school-lunch program in the world. A free lunch encourages
children to come to school and gives them the energy they need to focus on
learning. The program began in the 1960s.
The
kitchen in Vrindaban is run by the Akshaya Patra Foundation. It is one of the
lunch program's biggest partners. "Just $11.50 can feed one child for an
entire year," Madhu Sridhar, president of Akshaya Patra USA, told TFK.
The
program is a "powerful demonstration of what's possible when people work
together," says U.S. President Barack Obama. To find out how you can help,
go to foodforeducation.org.
Lunch Is Served!
The
Akshaya Patra delivery van arrives at the Gopalgarh Primary School. Since the
program started, attendance has gone up, and the number of underweight children
has gone down. The children get unlimited helpings--as long as they finish
what's on their plates.
Multiple Choice
Questions:
1. Which of
these questions does the passage answer?
a. What is
an Indian?
b. What are
meals?
c. How do
Indian children eat lunch?
d. How do
school lunch programs help Indian children?
2. When you
SKIM the section called “A Growing Problem”, what words should get your
attention?
a. School,
lunch, program, children
b. Meals,
cook, food, eat
c. Eat,
chef, breakfast, drink
d. President,
cost, energy, fast
COMPLETE SKIM & TAKE NOTES Technique:
a. Turn the title into a question: What are Meals on Wheels?
b. Write and answer the W? words / use only key words and phrases:
who, what, where, when, why, how
c. Answer the title question: Meals on wheels is.....
Open-Ended
Question:
India is home to more hungry children
than any other country. A school-lunch
program feeds 120 million students there.
Explain how a school-lunch program is a good way to help feed hungry
children. Use examples from the reading
to support your answer.
____________________________________________________
ESL 2 Mid-Term Vocabulary Study Sheet
Use your notebook or book or http://dictionary.reference.com/ to find and write the
definition for each of these words.
Study the words and the definitions for the mid-term exam.
2. Weightlessness
3. Territory
4. Launch
5. Journey
6. Inspired
7. Defy
8. Discover
9. Expedition
10. Explore
11. Gravity
12. Clue
13. Barrier
14. Anxiously
15. Astronaut
