subject-verb formative assessment

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Name______________________________________ Mitch Albom’s “The Courage of Detroit”-Subject-Verb Agreement The following is a brief passage from Mitch Albom’s “The Courage of Detroit”, in which he writes about the current views of the city in comparison to its citizens. Where does Mitch Albom work? How do people currently view Detroit? For the first two paragraphs, draw a box around the correct subject-verb agreement. And yet to live in Detroit these days is to want to scream. But where do you begin? Our doors (is/are) being shuttered. Our walls (is/are) falling down. Our daily bread, the auto industry, (is/are) reduced to morsels. Our schools are in turmoil. Our mayor went to jail. Our two biggest newspapers announced they will soon cut home delivery to three days a week. Our most common lawn sign (is/are) FOR SALE. And our NFL team lost every week this season. A perfect 0-16. Even the homeless guys (is/are) sick of it. We want to scream, but we don’t scream, because this is not a screaming place, this is a swallow-hard-and-deal-with-it place. So workers (rises/rise) in darkness and rev their engines against the winter cold and drive to the plant and punch in and spend hours doing the work that America doesn’t want to do any more, the kind that (make/makes) something real and hard to the touch. Manufacturing. Remember manufacturing? They do that here. And then they (punches/punch) out and (drives/drive) home (three o’clock is rush hour in these parts, the end of a shift) and (washes/wash) and (touches/touch) the kids under the chin and (sits/sit) down for dinner and (flips/flip) on the news. And then they really want to scream.

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Mitch Albom (Courage of Detroit)

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Mitch Alboms The Courage of Detroit-Subject-Verb AgreementThe following is a brief passage from Mitch Alboms The Courage of Detroit, in which he writes about the current views of the city in comparison to its citizens. Where does Mitch Albom work?How do people currently view Detroit? For the first two paragraphs, draw a box around the correct subject-verb agreement. And yet to live in Detroit these days is to want to scream. But where do you begin? Our doors (is/are) being shuttered. Our walls (is/are) falling down. Our daily bread, the auto industry, (is/are) reduced to morsels. Our schools are in turmoil. Our mayor went to jail. Our two biggest newspapers announced they will soon cut home delivery to three days a week. Our most common lawn sign (is/are) FOR SALE. And our NFL team lost every week this season. A perfect 0-16. Even the homeless guys (is/are) sick of it.We want to scream, but we dont scream, because this is not a screaming place, this is a swallow-hard-and-deal-with-it place. So workers (rises/rise) in darkness and rev their engines against the winter cold and drive to the plant and punch in and spend hours doing the work that America doesnt want to do any more, the kind that (make/makes) something real and hard to the touch. Manufacturing. Remember manufacturing? They do that here. And then they (punches/punch) out and (drives/drive) home (three oclock is rush hour in these parts, the end of a shift) and (washes/wash) and (touches/touch) the kids under the chin and (sits/sit) down for dinner and (flips/flip) on the news.And then they really want to scream.Because what they sees -- what all Detroit sees -- is a nation that appear ready to flick us away like lint. We sees senators voting our death sentence. We sees bankers clucking their tongues at our business model (as if we invented the credit default swap!). We sees Californians knocks our cars for ruining the environment (as if their endless driving have nothing to do with it). We sees sports announcers calls our football team ridiculous. Heck, during the Lions annual Thanksgiving game, CBSs Shannon Sharpe actually wore a bag over his head.It hurt us. We may not show it, but it do. You can say, Aw, thats the car business or Thats the Lions, but we is the car business, we is the Lions. Our veins is right up under the citys skin -- you cut Detroit, its citizens bleed.