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The Night the Power Went Out

6th grade fiction passage about family and community: 282 words, five questions, an answer key and vocabulary.

6th grade fiction family and community 282 words

The Night the Power Went Out

At exactly seven o'clock, the lights in the apartment building blinked once and went out, and the refrigerator stopped humming. Maya's laptop screen went black in the middle of her mathematics homework.

"Great," she groaned. "Now I cannot finish, and it is due tomorrow."

Her little brother, Theo, was already pressed against the window. "Maya, look! The whole street is dark!" Across the city, windows that were usually glowing had gone quiet, and above the buildings there were more stars than Maya had ever noticed before.

Their mother lit two candles and set them on the kitchen table. Then there was a knock at the door. It was Mrs. Alvarez from the next floor, holding a flashlight and a pot of soup. "My stove is electric, but yours is gas," she explained. "Could I borrow your burner? I did not want the soup to spoil."

Within an hour the apartment was full of neighbors. Mr. Kim from downstairs brought a deck of cards, and a teenager from the fourth floor arrived with a guitar. Someone shared a loaf of bread, and someone else passed around cups of warm soup. Maya realized that she had not spoken to half of these people during the entire year her family had lived in the building.

By nine o'clock, everyone was singing together in the glow of the candles, and Theo had fallen asleep on the rug. When the lights came back on at ten, nobody cheered right away. For a second they all just blinked at the unfamiliar brightness.

"Well," Mrs. Alvarez said with a laugh, "we should do this again sometime. Maybe with the lights on."

Maya smiled. Her homework could wait until morning.

Questions

  1. What was Maya doing when the power went out? in the text

  2. Why did Mrs. Alvarez come to Maya's apartment? in the text

  3. What did the neighbors bring to share? in the text

  4. How did Maya's feelings change over the evening? think about it

  5. What does Mrs. Alvarez mean by "Maybe with the lights on"? think about it

Words to know

groan
to make a low sound because you are annoyed or in pain
spoil
to go bad so it cannot be eaten
glow
a soft, steady light
burner
the part of a stove that makes heat for cooking

How to use it

  1. Press Read it big (or B) to put the text on the projector, or Full screen (F) to fill the whole screen.
  2. Ask the questions one at a time and use Show answer when the class has decided. A shows or hides every answer.
  3. Print student copy for the class, or Print with answers for yourself.

Ideas for class

  • Before reading, put groan, spoil, glow and burner on the board with their meanings from the Words to know section and have students predict what the story will be about.
  • Read it aloud once while students follow along, then have them reread it alone or with a partner. At a calm 100 words a minute it takes about 3 minutes to read aloud.
  • Use the Read it big button (or B) to put the text on the projector, and Show answer on one question at a time so the class commits to an answer first.
  • Question 4 asks the reader to infer. Ask students to point to the words in the passage that led them to their answer.
  • Ask students to retell the story in three sentences: how it began, what the problem was, and how it ended.
  • Print the student copy for independent work and keep the answer-key copy for yourself.

Related

Questions

What reading level is "The Night the Power Went Out"?

It was written for 6th grade. It has 282 words and works out to a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of about 5.1. That is a formula's estimate from sentence length and syllables, and it is not a Lexile or a guided reading level, so check it against your students.

What do the questions ask?

There are five. 3 ask for something the text says directly and 2 ask the reader to work something out from clues. Each has an answer in the key, and the answers are written as a teacher would accept them, not as the only possible wording.

How long does it take to read?

About 3 minutes read aloud at 100 words a minute. For a one-minute fluency check, paste it into the fluency timer and use the word count.

Can I print it?

Yes. Print student copy gives the passage, the questions with lines to write on, and the word meanings. Print with answers gives the same page with the answers filled in. Both are made in your browser.

Is this passage from a published book?

No. It was written for Peabody Teach, so there is no book to buy and no login to read it.

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