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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. After Christmas 1997, what do the students have to do to accept an award?

2. What poem does a student write after realizing living in the ghetto and having brown skin does not mean you cannot be successful?

3. How does a mother of a student die of shortly before her Christmas Eve birthday?

4. What novel inspires one of the student's to try to write her own book?

5. Why, a few weeks before graduation, does a student have to give up his dream of attending a prestigious technical school?

Short Essay Questions

1. What do the Freedom Writers want readers of their book to do?

2. Why does the Guess? Company wish to help the students get to New York City to accept an award?

3. Why does a student have trouble editing a story about an abortion?

4. Why are little kids bad in the projects?

5. Why it Christmas Eve so difficult for the student who writes Diary 113?

6. Why is it difficult for Gruwell to get permission to teach the students their senior year?

7. Why does a student have to clean his/her mother's blood off the wall?

8. Why does a student refer to choices s/he is making as if the student is a traveler in Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken"?

9. Why does the character Celie in "The Color Purple" remind a student about her Uncle Joe?

10. Why does a student mention that her/his mother said that "Silence gets you nowhere in life"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Things change for the Freedom Writers from the time they begin classes with Gruwell their freshman year beyond when they graduate from high school. What are some changes students make? What books, people, or events help students to change? List examples from the book of how specific students change and what specific things help the students to change.

Essay Topic 2

During the fall semester of the sophomore year, a student struggles with the decision of whether to protect a "homie" and lie in court or to tell the truth. Before the student went to courtroom, what does s/he plan to say? What changes the student's mind? What conversation with his/her mother may be a factor in the student's decision? What circumstances in the student's own life may influence the student's decision? What does the student finally decide to do? Why?

Essay Topic 3

The students study Ralph Waldo Emerson when learning about self-reliance. What does this quote by Emerson mean: "Who so should be a man, must be a nonconformist"? How does the quote relate to self-reliance? From their diary entries, list examples of how the students are becoming more self-reliant. How is Gruwell helping the students become more self-reliant? How are the circumstances in their daily lives making the students more self-reliant?

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