Version D — ELA Practice Test

The first day at Westbrook Elementary, Jonah was given Seat 14B in Mrs. Okafor's class. The seat was in the second-to-last row, between a girl who was already reading and a boy who was drawing something complicated in his notebook margin.

Jonah had moved four times in three years. He had learned to read a classroom the way a sailor reads the sky — not what it looked like on the surface, but what it was likely to do.

This classroom looked like the kind where groups had already formed.

At lunch, he found a spot at the end of a long table and ate quietly. A girl across from him was explaining something to the whole table with her hands moving fast. He watched without joining.

In the afternoon, Mrs. Okafor asked the class to write a paragraph about something they knew well. Jonah wrote about tide pools — he had lived near the coast for two years and knew which rocks the sea stars hid under and what a hermit crab sounds like when it moves.

Mrs. Okafor stopped at his desk. This is very specific, she said. The class might like to hear this.

Jonah read his paragraph out loud. When he finished, the boy from the notebook margin — his name was Caleb — said: Wait, hermit crabs make sounds? Yeah, Jonah said. Kind of like a small click. That's amazing, said Caleb.

It was not much. But it was a beginning.

Every year, billions of animals around the world make remarkable journeys — not just to find food or escape the cold, but to return to a place where they belong. From salmon swimming upstream to the exact stream where they hatched, to Arctic terns flying pole-to-pole across entire oceans, migration is often a journey home.

Some animals travel in groups that are essential to their survival. Wildebeest cross the Serengeti plains of Africa in herds of over a million animals. The herd provides protection — individuals on the edges are more vulnerable to predators, while those in the center are safer. Being part of the group is not just comfortable; for wildebeest, it is necessary.

Other animals navigate alone but are guided by invisible connections. Sea turtles hatch on a specific beach and spend decades in the ocean, yet return to that same beach to lay their eggs. Scientists believe sea turtles imprint on the magnetic signature of their birth beach — essentially memorizing an invisible map of where they began.

Belonging is not always about returning to the same place. Some animals create belonging wherever they settle. Beavers do not migrate. Instead, they reshape their environment to fit their needs — building dams that create ponds, which attract fish, birds, and other species. The beaver does not find a place where it belongs; it builds one.

Human communities work in similar ways. Some people return to where they came from. Others build belonging in new places — through connection, contribution, and the slow work of becoming part of somewhere new.

Belonging, whether for animal or human, is not always given. Sometimes it is navigated, sometimes it is built, and sometimes it is simply where you find yourself called to return.

When Lena joined the Riverside Community Choir, she was the youngest member by eleven years. The choir had been together for a decade. They had routines — who stood where, who arrived early to set up chairs, who kept the extra pencils.

Lena was assigned a spot in the second row, between a large man named Gerald who sang bass and a woman named Ruth who corrected her posture twice in the first rehearsal.

She almost did not come back for the second rehearsal. But she had agreed to join and she did not like quitting things.

By the fourth rehearsal, she had learned that Ruth's posture corrections always came with a small nod afterward — the kind that meant not criticism but care.

By the sixth, Gerald had started saving her a spot.

The moment Lena realized she had found a place in the choir was not dramatic. It happened between measures forty-two and forty-three of the concert piece they were rehearsing, in the middle of a long held note. She felt the voices around her lift and lean into one another — Gerald's bass below her, Ruth's alto beside her, the tenors ahead. For a moment, the sound was not a collection of separate people. It was one thing.

And Lena was part of it.

You do not arrive belonging.

You arrive carrying everything

from all the places you have been.

The new place does not know you yet.

That is not a flaw — it is a beginning.

Belonging is not a door already open.

It is a path you make

by showing up again and again,

by learning what the place needs

and finding where you fit.

Some days the path is steep.

Some days it turns back on itself.

But every place you have been

taught you how to walk.

And one day you will look up

and realize: you are not at the beginning anymore.

You are somewhere.

And somewhere

is enough to start from.