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Grade 6

6.10.C: Reading - Comprehension of Informational Text - Expository Text

6.10.C Explain How Different Organizational Patterns Develop The Main Idea & Author's Viewpoint

Sailing to New Horizons

1. You might take a car, a bus, or a bike to school. But in Bangladesh, instead of waiting for a school bus to come down their street, many students wait for a school boat to come down the river. That’s right— these students attend school on a boat!

2. Bangladesh is very close to sea level. For this reason the land is flooded for five months of every year. The flooding creates many problems. For the nearly 160 million people living there, the periodic flooding means that they are often unable to access roads, electricity, or telephones.

3. Growing up in Bangladesh, Mohammed Rezwan was often frustrated by these disruptions. Though the floods sometimes hindered his education, Rezwan eventually finished school and became an architect. He did not want to design houses, though. He had a better idea. In 1998 he founded an organization called Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha. The name means “self-reliance.” The purpose of the organization is to help the people of Bangladesh receive an education and also to bring technology and an improved quality of life to poor people in remote areas of the country.

4. In 2002, Rezwan began transforming boats into schools. The boat she used were long and narrow, with flat bottoms so that they could float in shallow water. The decks were covered by waterproof roofs to protect the inside of the classroom from the rain. Underneath the roofs were desks, books, bookshelves, and computers. Each boat was built to accommodate between 30 and 35 students. The boats had everything you might find in a regular classroom. The only difference was that they floated on a river.

5. These boats have been a great success. Today Rezwan and his organization operate 88 boats that navigate hundreds of rivers in northern Bangladesh. About half the boats are used as schools, and the other half are used as temporary houses during the flood season. In addition to the schools and the temporary housing, there are also a floating technology and training center, a library that allows students to check out books, and a health-care center. The school boats travel along the rivers and pick up students for classes that include computer technology, agriculture, and human rights. After one session finishes, the boat drops the students off at home and picks up more students. Teachers on the boats usually conduct three or four sessions every day.

6. At night the boats provide additional learning opportunities for students and community members. Adults attend evening literacy courses. Students study using solar lamps that are charged during the day at stations near the river. Special equipment on the boats also projects lessons onto big screens made from sailcloth. People can come down to the riverbank to watch Web tutorials, documentaries, and other films. In all, these boats help educate close to 90,000 families in Bangladesh.

7. Parents who live in the flood area are happy to have the boats in their communities. When asked about the program, Farida, whose six year-old daughter attends class on a school boat, said, “It was difficult for my parents to send me to school, but now all the facilities are in the village. I have started planning for my daughter’s future education. I want to see her become a doctor or engineer.”

8. By floating down these rivers, the school boats deliver more than books. They deliver knowledge, opportunity, and hope to all generations. “This [library] boat inspired me,” said 18-year-old student Shanto Islam, who enjoys reading science fiction books. “I started to dream.” Islam now wants to attend a university.

Renewed Hope for “Extinct” Species

1. Long ago in the highlands of Australia, it was common at night to hear aloud repeating noise that resembled that of a motorcycle in the distance. This bizarre sound came from a frog known as the yellow-spotted bell frog. The frog also had other distinctive features. As its name suggests, it had yellow spots on its groin and outer thighs. It also had fully webbed feet. Although these unusual features should make it easy to recognize, the average Australian today has never seen this frog. Nor have they heard its call.

2. More than 30 years ago, a fungus called chytrid began attacking many of Australia’s frogs. The fungus had an especially harmful effect on the yellow-spotted bell frog. Those frogs that survived the fungus were preyed on by foxes and cats. Scientists thought that the yellow-spotted bell frog had become extinct—or at least that is what was believed until one day in October 2008.

3. On that day fisheries conservation officer Luke Pearce was walking along a stream in the Australian state of New South Wales. He was attempting to find a fish known as the southern pygmy perch. Instead, on the side of the stream, he saw a type of frog he had never seen before.

4. However, Pearce had recently attended a talk given by Dr. David Hunter, an expert on threatened species, about Australia’s disappearing frogs. Among the frogs Hunter described was the yellow-spotted bell frog. Although the species had not been seen for decades, Hunter was hopeful that tiny populations of the frogs might still remain in remote areas as had occurred with some other species. He asked the members of his audience to watch for them.

5. As Pearce stared at the frog, he recalled Hunter’s talk. “It was basking out on a reed during the day, and when it jumped across and started swimming away, I thought it definitely looked like a bell frog,” Pearce said. Excitedly he called Hunter. “Mate,” he said, “I think I’ve just seen a bell frog out here.”

6. A year passed before Pearce and Hunter could return to the area together. There they and others discovered a colony of about 100 of the rare frogs. This discovery, Hunter said, “was definitely the most exciting moment of my career, and I’d be surprised if I’ll repeat it.”

7. He added, “To have found this species that hasn’t been seen for 30 years and that professional researchers thought was extinct is great. It gives us a lot of hope that a lot of other species that we thought were extinct aren’t actually extinct—we just haven’t found them.”

8. The rediscovery of the yellow-spotted bell frog, though, does not mean that it is out of danger. On its own, a colony of 100 frogs has little chance of long-term survival. One worry that remains is the fungus. Possibly, as Hunter hopes, this colony survived because it is resistant to the fungus. Another explanation is that somehow its location provided protection from the fungus.

9. Determining which of the possibilities is the case is important because the answer could help increase the numbers of yellow-spotted bell frogs. To that end, six tadpoles have been removed from the site of the discovery and taken to the Taronga Zoo. There the tadpoles will become part of a breeding program. When enough frogs have been bred, they will be placed in locations in the wild where they once thrived. Their survival in these areas would support the resistance theory.

10. In the meantime, other measures have been taken to protect the yellow-spotted bell frog. Among them was a long delay in announcing the frog’s rediscovery. This delay, Hunter said, gave experts time to develop plans to protect the colony. Even now, the exact location of the colony remains a secret. This will help keep human intrusion to a minimum so that what may be the yellow-spotted bell frog’s last remaining refuge will remain, in fact, a refuge.

Robot on the Ice
by Kimberly Shillcutt Tyree, Ph.D.

1. We stood on a giant ice field about 1,000 miles from the South Pole. We were surrounded by blowing snow, with nothing in sight but a few crates of supplies and a robot.

2. First things first—we started putting up tents!

3. Seven of us had just arrived on the Antarctic Plateau to work on a project for NASA. We were part of a research team from the Field Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I was one of three students in robotics who were lucky enough to be invited to go on this trip by the project leader, Dr. Dimitrios Apostolopoulos.

Rocks from Space
4. We had come to see if our robot could find meteorites— rocks that have fallen to Earth from space.

5. Meteorites are important to NASA because they can tell us more about what is in space. Some were blasted off the surface of Mars long ago by asteroids. They have given us clues about the red planet. Even older meteorites hold clues about the birth of the solar system.

6. We needed to come to this faraway place because Antarctica is the best place to find meteorites. When space rocks fall on Antarctic ice fields, snow covers them. As the ice fields creep toward the ocean, some of them run into hills and mountains. There the ice stops, and the wind blows away the top layers of snow. The buried meteorites then come to the surface, where they can be found.

7. A few people come to Antarctica every summer to hunt for meteorites, but searching on the ice is cold and tiring. Even in the summer, the temperature can feel like forty degrees below zero.

8. We were not typical meteorite hunters, though. We had a robot. We would stay in a heated tent and “talk” to the robot through our computers while the robot searched on the ice more than a mile away.

A Wandering Robot
9. We called our robot Nomad. We had designed it to explore remote places, just as a space robot explores other planets. Nomad had to be able to travel over rough ground and drive for long distances. It had to be able to look around, study objects that we had programmed it to look for, and send its information back to humans. So we gave Nomad a sturdy frame, four wheels, lots of sensors and computers, and wireless access so that humans could communicate with it.

10. Nomad had already explored a desert in South America, but before we went to Antarctica we had to make some changes. We added heaters to keep the computers and sensors warm, and we added studs to the tires so Nomad could move on the ice without slipping.

11. After setting up our tents, we went to work on our robot. It had traveled from the coast hanging under a helicopter, so we had taken off all the fragile parts before the trip. Now we put them all back on: cameras and a laser to help the robot see, and a sensor called a spectrometer.

12. The spectrometer was attached to the end of Nomad’s robot arm, so Nomad could lower the sensor onto rocks. The spectrometer measures changes in light as the light reflects off rock. Using those changes, Nomad can tell better than our eyes if a rock is a meteorite or an ordinary rock. We call those ordinary rocks “meteor-wrongs.”

13. Dr. William “Red” Whittaker, director of the Field Robotics Center, said that Nomad was a new kind of robot because it could search on its own and even sort meteorites from Earth rocks.

14. “Humans classify [things] every time they sort pennies from nickels, and they search every time they lose their car keys,” he said. “But these are new skills for robots.”

Searching for Meteorites
15. We started up the robot and all its computers and told it to start searching. But Antarctica is very different from Pennsylvania, where we had done most of our original testing. We needed to test Nomad in this new environment, and we had to make some changes to the software and the sensors.

16. Finally we had everything working, and we sent off the robot. We sat in our tent and watched Nomad’s progress from our computers. It found several ordinary rocks, and then, suddenly, my computer screen flashed an alert. Nomad had found a meteorite!

17. Nomad found several more meteorites before we left Antarctica. After we returned to the United States, scientists began to study the rocks for clues about outer space. And our robot had returned a hero.

The Incredible Shrinking Pyramid

1. A structure located near the city of Giza, Egypt, has been called the horizon of Khufu, the last ancient wonder of the world, and the Great Pyramid. Whatever you choose to call it, this amazing pyramid has stood for more than 4,500 years, remaining in place while the world around it has changed in many ways.

2. As you might imagine, something that has been around for 45 centuries has quite a history. The Great Pyramid was built by the Egyptian king Khufu, also known as Cheops. Khufu wanted to construct a grand monument that would honor him after he died. What he had built was perhaps the largest structure on the planet. Originally the pyramid was 481 feet high at its peak. Its sides measured an average of 755 feet in length. More than two million yellow limestone blocks were used to build the pyramid, which contains Khufu’s burial chamber deep inside it. Though many other pyramids were built after this one, none could match its great size.

3. Many people have wondered how the ancient Egyptians could have built such a massive structure. Even experts aren’t sure. Thousands of workers would have been needed to move the structure’s huge blocks, each of which weighed more than two tons. Workers moved the blocks by pulling them with ropes across wooden rollers. As the height of the pyramid grew, the workers would have needed ramps or ladders to reach its top.

4. The work of building such a great structure must have been very difficult. Historians have learned that the pyramid’s builders were farmers. When the Nile River flooded, the farmers’ fields were underwater, so they worked as builders instead. Bakers and doctors also lived nearby the builders during the construction project to provide food and medical assistance.

5. Khufu built the Great Pyramid with the intention that everyone would notice it. In that, he was successful. Khufu’s pyramid was the grandest of its time, with the finest-quality stones. The pyramid’s fame has created problems, though. One such problem is that the pyramid, once the greatest structure on the planet, is shrinking. In fact, the structure has lost about 30 feet of its original height. It’s not that the pyramid is sinking into the sand. The structure has actually lost height over the years because people have removed its outer layers of limestone rock and used the rock to construct other buildings. Giza is not far from Egypt’s capital city, Cairo. As Cairo grew over centuries, the demand for new buildings increased. To meet that demand, people took stones from the pyramid’s outer shell and used them to build houses and other buildings. This practice only advanced the shrinking process that’s been occurring for thousands of years, as the wind, sun, and rain have worn down the same outer layers of the pyramid.

6. The Great Pyramid is also being worn away from within. Because the structure is an amazing sight and a historical landmark, thousands of tourists visit it yearly. As they walk through the tunnels and rooms inside the pyramid, the water vapor from their breath gets trapped inside the walls. Over time that water vapor collects into salts and forms a mold that causes the stones to deteriorate. So just as the pyramid is shrinking from the outside, it is rotting from the inside.

7. Fortunately one man, the archaeologist Zahi Hawass, made it his life’s goal to restore the Great Pyramid and the smaller pyramids that surround it. In his official role as a protector of Egypt’s antiquities, Hawass worked to publicize the problems caused by allowing too many people to walk through the pyramids. Persuading people to address these problems was difficult, however, because of tourism’s importance to Egypt’s economy. So Hawass tried to balance the needs of his country with the goal of preserving its great structures. When one pyramid was closed for restoration, he made sure that others were open for people to enjoy.

8. Closing a pyramid allowed workers to seal up cracks, scrape off mold, and install airways that allow harmful moisture to escape. The work was done quickly to allow tourists to return. Although interest in the pyramids is appreciated, if it were up to Hawass, tourists would see these great buildings only from the outside. “In my opinion,” he says, “the magic of the pyramid is on the outside, not on the inside.” Admiring the Great Pyramid from a distance, he says, is the best way to make sure that it remains an impressive structure for many centuries to come.

Traveling West

1. People today often pack up and move to another part of the country. Modern technology allows them to keep in contact with friends and family; automobiles and planes allow for visits. In the 1800s, however, such a move meant leaving behind family and friends, possibly never to see them again. It also meant selling many possessions and venturing into unfamiliar and sometimes uncharted territory.

2. Moving day for pioneer families was preceded by months of preparation. Families could carry only those possessions that would fit in a prairie schooner, or covered wagon. Toys, furniture, books, extra linens and clothing—even family heirlooms—were sold to raise money for the trip. The wagon was packed with only those things that were needed to start a new life: farming and hunting tools, seeds, utensils, food, essential clothing, and linens. Chicken cages were often strapped to the back of the wagon, and farm animals walked behind.

3. The trek west was hot and dusty in summer, wet in spring, and cold in fall. People traveling across the continent didn’t have the luxury of smooth paved roads. Instead, they had rutted dirt paths, which jolted the wagon wheels, creating a bumpy ride. Strong winds blew grit, and frequent thunderstorms soaked the travelers. Most pioneers tried to cross the plains as quickly as they could in order to reach a safe place before the first snowfall of the season. Winter brought dangers—freezing conditions and few sources of food—that no one wanted to experience.

4. Young children and mothers usually rode in the wagons. When they peeked out from behind the canvas covers, they would often see an endless stretch of prairie grass. Older children walked alongside the wagons. Pioneer children making the trek westward had daily tasks to keep them busy. Some worked as teamsters, driving the slow, heavy-footed teams of oxen

5. As an adult, Robert Sweeten wrote about his experience as a six-year-old teamster. “I walked most of the way across the plains, with but an occasional ride. One time I was driving two yoke of oxen so my stepfather could ride a while and rest. I stepped on a prickly pear, and being barefooted, the needles ran into my feet. Mother had to pull them out.”

6. During the journey some children gathered firewood and buffalo chips, or droppings, which would be used as fuel for campfires. “We would take a sack and fill it as we progressed. . . . They were very thick in a certain place close to the road. . . . I thought I was in luck. I was picking up as fast as I could when I heard the rattle of a snake. He was almost at my feet,” recalled Rachel Emma Woolley, who was a twelve-year-old chip collector in 1848.

7. Chores did not end when a family stopped to set up camp. Adults prepared the area and tended to the animals’ needs. Children fetched water in buckets—sometimes from several miles away—chopped wood, washed clothes, watched younger siblings, cooked, and hunted.

8. However, life on the westward trail was not all hard physical labor.When the day’s chores were done, mothers would sometimes teach school subjects to their children.

9. William M. Colvig’s mother expected him to study as well as work. “Mother had reduced the library to just a few books . . . a hymn book, Pilgrim’s Progress, Frost’s Pictorial History of the United States, Webster’s Elementary Spelling Book, and McGuffey’s First and Second Reader. During the six months or more we were on the plains, Mother had me recite to her, so that by the end of the trip I was reading in the Second Reader.”

10. After doing chores and studying, pioneer children enjoyed playing games, including tag, hopscotch, and hide-and-seek. Since most children had to leave toys behind when they began the trek west, they had to be resourceful in creating their new playthings. They made dolls from cornhusks, and checkers from slices of corncobs; they carved tops for spinning from wood and made marbles from hardened clay.

11. The rewards of the journey west included land and new opportunities. The pioneer children who endured the westward trek often grew up to become skilled, persistent, inventive, and hardworking adults.

Marvels of the Modern World: Going Up

1. From the great pyramids of Egypt to the cathedrals of Europe, people have tried to touch the sky with tall buildings. At one time structures only a few dozen feet tall seemed remarkable. In the 1920s buildings that were 500 feet tall were considered amazing. Today’s skyscrapers can be three times that height and more.

The Evolution of Building Technology
2. Before the late 1800s the construction of tall buildings wasn’t very practical. Early building materials such as clay and stone were heavy. To support the weight of high walls, the base of a building had to be thick and wide, restricting usable space in the lower part of the structure. Too many windows made the walls weak, so tall buildings were often dark inside. With stairs providing the only way up, reaching the top of a tall structure meant climbing a seemingly endless flight of steps.

3. It wasn’t until the late 1800s that towering buildings became possible. The mass production of steel, a material that could support the weight of a building’s walls, was a crucial breakthrough. Another came with the development of new construction designs that allowed buildings to safely withstand high winds. Moreover, the invention of the elevator made it possible to move up and down a tall building quickly. With these elements in place, the era of the skyscraper began.

What Is a Skyscraper?
4. There’s no standard definition of what makes a tall building a skyscraper. A building that looms above one city might be dwarfed by the buildings in another. Experts have also created different categories for tall buildings. In some cases only the occupied floors of a building are measured, while in other cases an antenna or tower that stands at the top of a building is counted toward a building’s height. Still, people seem to know a skyscraper when they see one.

5. William Le Baron Jenney designed what many historians regard as the first skyscraper. His Home Insurance Building, completed in 1885 in Chicago, was the first building to have a steel skeleton inside its walls. This building was 10 stories tall, an impressive height for its time. 

6. Other historians consider the Woolworth Building to be the first true skyscraper. Built in New York City in 1913, this building is close to 800 feet tall and has 57 floors aboveground. It was the first very tall building to overcome the major problems of high-rise construction. The Woolworth Building has a steel skeleton, an elevator, and a design that braces it against strong winds.

A Growing Need for Height
7. In the nineteenth century many people moved to cities, looking for jobs. As a result, many urban areas became crowded. Since most cities had limited amounts of land, sites for new houses and offices were scarce and expensive. Architects and engineers thought of a solution: build up, not out.

8. Building up seemed like an ideal way to solve some problems in growing cities. Builders soon found, however, that skyscrapers posed challenges. The need for special equipment and designs meant that building up was costly. Since tall structures could block sunlight and air from reaching a street, new laws were needed to control how and where they could be built. Nonetheless, skyscrapers went up—and up and up. These exciting new buildings gave architects and engineers a chance to demonstrate their skills. Many cities became a showcase for modern building techniques and distinctive skylines. Some skyscrapers echoed art trends of the past, linking cities to their history. Others brought cities into the future with ultramodern towers of glass and steel.

How High Can We Go?
9. Completed in 1931, the Empire State Building in New York City, standing 102 stories (1,250 feet) high, was the tallest building in the world for about 40 years until the completion of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1970, followed by the Sears Tower in Chicago in 1973. Recently, however, with the availability of more advanced technologies and building materials, skyscrapers are testing new limits. In 1998 the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, both standing 1,483 feet tall, became the world’s tallest buildings. Then came Taipei 101 in Taiwan, rising over 1,650 feet. Today the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, at 2,717 feet, is the world’s tallest building. If our wish is to someday live with our heads in the clouds, each new skyscraper takes us a little closer to that goal.

Mechanical Marvels
Looking to the Sky

1. People have always been fascinated with birds in flight streaking across the sky. The ancient Greeks told a story about a father and son soaring like birds after the father made them each a pair of wings. The inventor and artist Leonardo da Vinci, who lived in the 1400s, actually built mechanical wings in an attempt to fly like a bird. Modern airplanes and helicopters can take us into the sky, but they do not really simulate bird flight. In fact, nothing man-made has truly been able to copy a bird’s ability to take off and land instantly and to change direction in flight with agility. Nothing has done this, that is, until recently.

2. In 2011 a German company named Festo released a robot that imitates bird flight. The robot’s name is SmartBird, and it is modeled after a herring gull. SmartBird can take off and land simply by flapping its wings. It can glide, fly, and rapidly change directions. In the sky it looks like a bird, but up close it is obviously a robot.

3. Festo’s design is successful in several ways. First, SmartBird is extremely lightweight. Also, its body and wings are shaped just like those of a seagull. Lastly, SmartBird’s wings can bend, move up and down, and even twist at different angles. This allows it to fly and maneuver efficiently. The bird’s computerized brain is in its belly. That’s also the location of the battery, the engine, and some high-powered electronics that allow it to be controlled remotely.

4. Festo’s purpose in creating SmartBird is not just to make a cool robot, though. SmartBird’s exciting design and potential applications have even attracted the attention of German politicians. The company wants to use the technology to help make machines work more efficiently in order to conserve resources. Machines that use energy in the way birds do will require less electricity to operate and may be able to work for longer periods without needing to be recharged.

5. SmartBird is a good example of science using models in nature to enhance technology. And why not? If the design works in nature, why shouldn’t we use it, too?

Medical Monthly News
In the Blink of an Eye

1. Have you ever played the blinking game with friends? It’s fun to see who can last the longest without blinking. After 30 seconds you probably struggle to resist closing and then reopening your eyes. In fact, most people blink every three to seven seconds. However, you rarely think about it. Blinking usually occurs automatically, like your heartbeat.

Miniature Windshield Wipers
2. What happens when you blink? Each time you blink, muscles around your eyes contract to close your eyelids. Then two different muscles contract, raising your eyelids back up.

3. Your eyelids act like tiny windshield wipers. In the blink of an eye, they sweep dust and debris away. Eyelids also spread moisture. Glands in the eyelids lubricate the surface of the eyes. Without this repeated lubrication, your eyeballs begin to dry, and your eyelids feel sticky.

Quick as a Blink
4. People can blink on purpose. However, most blinking occurs involuntarily. You rarely notice this type of blink, which is incredibly fast. Your brain actually ignores the flash of darkness caused by a blink, giving you the impression of uninterrupted sight.

5. Each time you blink, your eye closes for about three-tenths of a second. With around 15,000 blinks per day, you can end up with your eyes shut from blinking for up to one hour and fifteen minutes a day! Yet you probably aren’t aware that your vision is interrupted for that amount of time each day.

Think Before You Blink
6. According to scientific research, the average eye blink rate in people varies greatly, ranging from 2 to 50 blinks a minute. Many factors affect the blink rate.

7. One factor is age. Newborn babies rarely blink. The reasons for this aren’t entirely clear, but one theory is that babies work hard to observe the world around them because their ability to see is not fully developed. Blink rates increase in childhood. From there, rates increase steadily until adulthood. Then blink rates decrease as people move into older adulthood. That’s when the muscles that control eyelids eventually lose some of their tone and ability to move.

8. Your blink rate also varies with the task being performed. You’ll blink less when you’re concentrating on something. For example, have you ever noticed that when you search the Internet on your computer, your eyes sting, burn, or feel scratchy? Your eyes dry out because your blink rate decreases by half while you are concentrating on looking at something. If you’re absorbed in reading, your blink rate will decrease. And you’ll blink less if you’re watching a scary movie, since the threat of danger causes people to be more observant.

9. When you’re thinking but not actually looking at something, your blink rate will also decrease. In school, when your teacher asks you a question, you’ll barely blink as you consider the answer. Once you start to reply, your blink rate will increase. Talking returns you to a standard blink rate. What happens if you think aloud while pondering the answer to a question? Your blink rate will return to its standard rate since you’re speaking.

10. Some activities, such as telling a lie, require a great deal of concentration. As people think about their lie, their blink rate is very low. Police use this knowledge to gain information from suspects when interrogating them. So the next time you think about telling a fib, you might keep in mind that your blinking eyes always tell the truth.

Connecting the Human Dots

1. People have been connecting the dots to form pictures for centuries. The famous French painter Georges Seurat used tiny dots of color on his canvases to form beautiful paintings of outdoor scenes. In needlepoint, tiny stitches of colored thread fit together to form an image that decorates a pillowcase or a blanket. Television and computer screens use tiny spots of color called pixels to form images for TV programs, video games, and websites.

2. One of the most unusual examples of connecting dots to make images, though, dates back to World War I. During the war Arthur Mole, a photographer from Zion, Illinois, traveled from military camp to military camp across the country to create different pictures of patriotic symbols using individuals as dots. He gathered 25,000 soldiers to form a likeness of the Liberty Bell. He also created a giant U.S. shield, an Uncle Sam, and a Statue of Liberty. But perhaps his best-known photo was that of President Woodrow Wilson. After the Allied victory in 1918, people living in the United States were relieved that the war was over. A sense of national pride pervaded the country. Mole was looking for a way to express the love he and others felt for the United States. He decided to create a living photograph of the president as a symbol of American pride.

3. At Camp Sherman, Ohio, he organized 21,000 troops into an image of their commander in chief, President Woodrow Wilson. The men formed a huge likeness of the president. Before any of the participants moved, Mole took a photograph of the image from above. President Wilson was so impressed with the method in which the portrait was created, he signed a copy of the photograph. Mole felt honored to have his work appreciated by the president of the United States.

4. So how exactly did Mole accomplish this feat? Mole had a special method of planning and photographing his living pictures. He and his partner John Thomas would first construct a wooden tower 70 or 80 feet above the soldiers’ gathering area. It usually took Mole and Thomas about a week to plan and take a picture, tracing an outline first on the glass plate of the camera and then on the ground. Mole would then make plans for his dots of color—which soldier would wear a hat, a jacket, or a shirt of a particular color and where those wearing each color would stand. Once each soldier was in the correct position, Mole climbed up the tower. From there the people he would photograph below looked like tiny specks of living color. It would take hours to get everyone in the exact location so that the image looked perfect.

5. Each new undertaking was a challenge. Often the biggest obstacle involved getting the proportions right. Sometimes the images were so large that Mole was a half-mile from the very farthest edge of his human picture. Mole figured out that to make the image look realistic, more people had to stand at the farthest edges than at the bottom of the picture, which was always closest to the camera. For the Statue of Liberty photograph, thousands of people stood to represent the torch at the top of the image, while only 17 people formed the base of Lady Liberty’s pedestal at the bottom.

6. Many adjustments were needed to make each picture perfect. Mole had to pay close attention to detail and consider all the minute parts within his patriotic images. Because of this, participating in one of Mole’s pictures was a time-consuming experience. People had to wait patiently for everyone to be positioned just right. When Mole photographed living art of the Statue of Liberty at Camp Dodge in Des Moines, Iowa, it was a very warm day, but many of the men in the photograph wore heavy wool coats to represent the dark colors of the statue. Some fidgeted as they waited because it was difficult to stand still for such a long period of time. Others fainted in the heat of the day.

7. Despite these physical challenges, Mole’s work is fondly remembered by those who contributed to his art. One soldier recalled that though participating in the formation of the image was only a temporary activity, he and other soldiers were honored to be part of something that allowed them to demonstrate their patriotism in a lasting way.

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Measures 1 skill fromGrade 6ELAR (2009)Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS)

Our brand new solo games combine with your quiz, on the same screen

Measures 1 skill from
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ELAR (2009)
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS)