Grade 8 ELA Practice Test: Poetry Analysis, Form, Figurative Language and Theme
- Poetry Analysis: Form, Figurative Language and Theme
- 10 questions
- 15 minutes
Read the poem "Night Shift," then answer the 10 questions. Tip: when a poem compares a person to an object, ask what that object does, then ask how the person does the same thing.
Tap an option to mark your answer. You can change your mind, or tap the same option again to leave the question blank. The correct answers and explanations appear when you finish the test.Tap an option to answer; tap it again to leave the question blank.
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Question 1
Read the poem and answer questions 1-10.
Night Shift
My mother leaves when the streetlights wake,
her badge clipped to her coat like a small moon.
All night she walks the hallways of the hospital,
a lighthouse in blue scrubs,
turning toward every call.At breakfast she is quiet.
Her coffee goes cold beside her hand.
I tell her about my test, my friend, my day,
and she listens with her eyes half-closed,
the way a harbor listens to the sea.When she sleeps, the house tiptoes.
I shut the curtains against the sun
and keep the dog from barking,
standing guard
the way she does for strangers every night.Which form is this poem written in?
Correct answer: B
The lines vary in length, they do not rhyme, and they follow no steady beat, which are features of free verse. The poem has three stanzas, not fourteen rhyming lines.
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Question 2
Poem (see above):
Which line from the poem contains a metaphor?
Correct answer: D
The mother is called a lighthouse without "like" or "as," which makes it a metaphor. The line about the badge uses "like," so it is a simile.
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Question 3
Poem (see above):
What does the lighthouse comparison suggest about the mother?
Correct answer: A
A lighthouse stays alert in the dark and guides ships to safety. The mother, "turning toward every call," does the same for patients.
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Question 4
Poem (see above):
What is the effect of the line "When she sleeps, the house tiptoes"?
Correct answer: C
The house is personified as tiptoeing, which means the people inside are being very quiet out of respect for her sleep. Nothing suggests fear or an old house.
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Question 5
Poem (see above):
What does the simile "the way a harbor listens to the sea" suggest about how the mother listens?
Correct answer: B
A harbor quietly receives the sea's waves. Together with "eyes half-closed," the image shows a tired mother who still takes in everything her child says.
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Question 6
Poem (see above):
Which detail best shows that the mother is exhausted after work?
Correct answer: D
She is too tired to drink her coffee, so it goes cold. The other lines describe her leaving, her work or what the speaker says.
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Question 7
Poem (see above):
How does the structure of the poem help develop its meaning?
Correct answer: A
The poem moves through one full cycle of her day: evening, morning and daytime sleep. This lets the last stanza show the family caring for her while she rests.
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Question 8
Poem (see above):
How does the final stanza change the relationship described in the poem?
Correct answer: C
The speaker is "standing guard / the way she does for strangers," so the caregiver is now cared for. The poem never says the mother wakes up or that the speaker is angry.
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Question 9
Poem (see above):
Which theme does the poem best support?
Correct answer: C
The speaker shows love by keeping the house quiet and dark so the mother can sleep. The poem does not claim hospital work is too hard or that children should stay silent.
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Question 10
Poem (see above):
From whose point of view is the poem told?
Correct answer: A
The speaker uses "I" and "my mother," so the poem is told in first person by the child. The mother is described as "she," not as "I."
Questions you leave blank are not counted as wrong.
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