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Grade 6

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D.1.1.8 PSSA Grade 6 ELA - Item and Scoring Sampler (2017)

FRONTIER BOY
by Edison McIntyre

Abraham Lincoln's rise to the national political stage and the presidency did not come easily. He lost his first election, finishing eighth among 13 candidates. While Lincoln was no stranger to setbacks, he possessed a determination to succeed that was born in the rugged country where he grew up. 

Abraham's parents, Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, married in 1806. The couple settled near Elizabethtown, Kentucky, where their daughter, Sarah, was born in 1807. The Lincolns owned a series of farms, but Thomas grew barely enough food to feed his family. He made additional money as a skilled carpenter. He built a one-room log cabin near Hodgenville, where a son, Abraham, was born on February 12, 1809. 

In later years, Abe remembered little about Kentucky. He was just seven years old when his family decided to leave and move farther west, across the Ohio River to Indiana. The Lincolns settled in what is now Spencer County, a few miles north of the river. Although Indiana became a state that year, 1816, the land along the Ohio was still dense forest, with few trails or settlements. The Lincolns spent their first winter there in a rough lean-to shelter while Thomas built a cabin. 

Tall and strong for his age, Abe took up an ax to cut down the trees surrounding their new home and hitched up a team to plow the fields he had helped clear. He hauled water to the house from the nearest spring, a mile away. 

The farm began to yield good crops, and as other settlers came to the area, Thomas found more work as a carpenter. But 1818 was a cruel year. A disease called "milk-sick" struck the community. It killed Nancy, who was just 34 years old. 

Death at such an early age was common in the 1800s. Abe's younger brother, Thomas, died when he was only a baby; his sister, Sarah, died at age 20 while bearing her first child. When Abe was 10, he was nearly killed after being kicked in the head by a horse. He learned quickly the hard lessons of life. 

Abe also learned to value knowledge. Thomas and Nancy had little formal education. In fact, Thomas could hardly sign his name, while Nancy signed with an X. Still, Nancy had great respect for learning. She loved to tell stories to Sarah and Abe, and before the family left Kentucky, she sent Abe to a small school near their home. 

About a year after Nancy died, Thomas went back to Elizabethtown. When he returned to Indiana, he brought with him his second wife. Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln was a widow with three children. Warm and loving, she treated Abe and Sarah as though they were her own children. PSSA ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS GRADE 6 
Abe's stepmother encouraged him to learn all he could. Over the years, he received fewer than 12 months of schooling, but he learned to read, write, and do a bit of arithmetic. An eager student, Abe often walked several miles to borrow books. He read Aesop's Fables, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, a biography of George Washington-anything he could find. He enjoyed listening to his father and other adults talk late into the night about farming, politics, and life. 

By age 14, Abe was old enough to work away from the Lincoln farm when his father could spare him. Over the next few years, he held several jobs-clearing land, splitting logs for fence rails, running a ferry. He gave most of his earnings to his father. When he was 19, he helped guide a flatboat loaded with produce down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. It was his first trip to a big city. 

In 1830, the Lincoln family moved west again, this time to Illinois. Soon afterward, Abe left home and began working in a general store in New Salem, a small settlement near Springfield. He enjoyed roughhousing with his new friends, and he loved to wrestle, but he also spent many hours reading. He joined a debating group and, in 1831, voted for the first time. 

The following year, Lincoln decided to run for the Illinois legislature. His campaign was severely delayed, though, when he volunteered for the state militia during the Black Hawk War. After serving for three months, he returned to New Salem in late July. He campaigned hard but lost the election. Still, he got 277 of the 300 votes in his town, and that encouraged him to run again. In 1834, with overwhelming support from New Salem, Lincoln won a seat in the state legislature, an office he would win three more times. After he was admitted to the bar in 1836, politics and the practice of law would pave a new path for this hardworking frontier boy.

Abraham Lincoln wrote this autobiography for Jesse Fell, a long-time Illinois Republican friend who was a native of Pennsylvania. Fell used his influence to get the piece incorporated in an article appearing in a Pennsylvania newspaper on February 11, 1860. Lincoln enclosed the autobiography in a letter to Fell that said, "There is not much of it, for the reason, I suppose, that there is not much of me." 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
December 20, 1859 
I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families-second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams, and others in Macon County, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky, about 1781 or 2. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. 

My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age; and he grew up, literally without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. We reached our new home about the time the State came into the Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals, still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so called; but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond "readin, writin, and cipherin" to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three; but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity. 

I was raised to farm work, which I continued till I was twenty-two. At twenty-one I came to Illinois, and passed the first year in Macon County. Then I got to New-Salem (at that time in Sangamon, now in Menard County), where I remained a year as a sort of Clerk in a store. Then came the Black-Hawk war; and I was elected a Captain of Volunteers-a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since. I went the campaign, was elated, ran for the Legislature the same year (1832) and was beaten-the only time I ever have been beaten by the people. The next, and three succeeding biennial elections, I was elected to the Legislature. I was not a candidate afterwards. During this Legislative period I had studied law, and removed to Springfield to practice it. In 1846 I was once elected to the lower House of Congress. Was not a candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive, practiced law more assiduously than ever before. Always a
Whig in politics, and generally on the Whig electoral tickets, making active canvasses-I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known. 

If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said, I am, in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing on an average one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair, and grey eyes-no other marks or brands recollected.

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English Language Arts
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Measures 10 skills fromGrade 6English Language ArtsPennsylvania Assessment Anchors and Eligible Content

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Measures 10 skills from
Grade 6
English Language Arts
Pennsylvania Assessment Anchors and Eligible Content