TELPAS Practice

Why is Danny waiting at the bus stop before his grandfather at the end of the story?

Analyze and Evaluate Information and Ideas · TELPAS Grades 6–7 reading. The correct answer, and the reasoning behind it.

Reporting category 3: make inferences, draw conclusions, and think about why the author wrote a text and how it is built.

Read the passage. Then answer the questions.

Bitter Melon

On Saturday mornings, Danny's grandfather, whom he called Ông, rode the bus to a community garden on the east side of Houston. This spring, Danny's mother said that Danny had to go with him.

Danny did not see the point. The grocery store down the street sold vegetables in neat plastic bags, and nobody there had to kneel in the dirt to get them.

Ông's garden plot was small, only about as long as a car. He handed Danny a trowel and showed him how to dig a hole as deep as his finger. Into each hole went two pale seeds. "Bitter melon," Ông said. "Your grandmother's favorite."

For two weeks, nothing happened. Danny checked every Saturday and found only dirt. "Maybe the seeds were bad," he said. Ông just poured water along the rows and said, "Seeds do not listen to complaining."

In the third week, small green leaves pushed up through the soil. By June, the vines had climbed the wooden frame Ông had built and covered it like a green curtain. Bumpy, pale green melons hung underneath.

Ông picked the first melon and turned it over in his hand. Then he told Danny a story Danny had never heard: how, as a boy in Vietnam, he had helped his own grandmother grow the same vegetable behind her house, and how she had cooked it with eggs for him whenever he was sick.

That evening, Danny's mother cooked the melon with eggs. It was so bitter that Danny made a face at the first bite. Ông laughed. Danny took a second bite anyway, and then a third.

The next Saturday, Danny was waiting at the bus stop before his grandfather got there.

The question

Choose the best answer.

Why is Danny waiting at the bus stop before his grandfather at the end of the story?

  • He wants to tell Ông that the melon was too bitter.
  • He wants to buy vegetables at the grocery store down the street instead.
  • He now cares about the garden and the family story behind it.Correct answer
  • His mother told him to leave the house early that day.

Why “He now cares about the garden and the family story behind it.” is correct

This asks the student to recognize how a character has changed. At the start Danny was made to go; at the end he arrives first. Between the two, he hears his grandfather's story about growing the same vegetable in Vietnam and eats the melon anyway, so the student can infer that the garden now means something to him.

Why the other answers are wrong

  • He wants to tell Ông that the melon was too bitter. — Danny took a second and third bite, which shows he accepted the taste.
  • He wants to buy vegetables at the grocery store down the street instead. — He is waiting for the bus to the garden, not going to the store.
  • His mother told him to leave the house early that day. — The story does not say this; the point is that Danny chooses to go now.

Practice more of this

More reading practice for Grades 6–7, or see the TELPAS practice test for 6th and 7th grade.

This is an independent study resource. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Texas Education Agency or the official TELPAS program. All questions here are original practice material written to match the published test design.