Worksheet

The Phone at the Return Desk

Compare an original lost-phone play with a traditional honesty tale, analyzing changes to character roles, events, and rewards.

Grade 8ELAInteractive · Printable

Aligned toRL.8.9

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1 Common Core standard
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13 questions
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Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 8
Subject: ELA
Question types: Multiple choice, Circle the answer, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students analyze how a modern play transforms events and character roles from a traditional tale.
Students explain how changes to a traditional reward develop a more complex theme about honesty.

How to use

Read the traditional pattern, then assign roles for the play. Have students support comparisons with the provided texts, not other versions of the tale.

Curriculum

Common Core standard covered

RL.8.9

Analyze how a modern story draws on themes, events, or character types from myths, traditional tales, or religious works, and makes them new.

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The Phone at the Return Desk

Analyze how a modern play transforms a traditional honesty tale.

Read the source pattern and play

Use only the traditional pattern below when comparing the texts. Bracketed directions describe actions onstage.

Traditional pattern: The Honest Woodcutter
In a traditional honesty tale, a woodcutter loses an ordinary axe in water. A supernatural helper retrieves a gold axe and then a silver one. Although both are valuable, the woodcutter says neither belongs to him. When the helper retrieves his ordinary axe, he identifies it truthfully. The helper rewards his honesty by giving him all three. A greedy imitator later claims a valuable axe that is not his and receives nothing. The tale connects truthful identification of lost property with a material reward; the supernatural helper controls both the test and its outcome.

The Phone at the Return Desk

1[A planetarium lobby after a school field trip. SAIRA checks her empty jacket pocket. DEV waits beside her. Through the glass doors, their classmates are boarding a bus.]
SAIRA: My phone was here before the last show.
DEV: Tell Ms. Chen. We have a few minutes.
SAIRA: She trusted me to keep track of it. My parents did, too.

2[At the return desk, ATTENDANT LUIS lifts a glossy phone from a tray.]
LUIS: Someone found this under a seat. Is it yours?
SAIRA: That model has the camera I wanted.
DEV: Yours has a crack across the corner.
[Saira reaches toward the glossy phone, then folds her hands behind her back.]
SAIRA: No. Mine isn't that one.

3LUIS: What does yours look like?
SAIRA: Blue case. One cracked corner. There's a tiny yellow sticker inside the clear back.
[Luis checks a second tray.]
DEV: You could have walked away with an upgrade.
SAIRA: And someone else would be standing here with an empty pocket.
LUIS: I'm glad you described yours. I'm trying to match things, not test anybody.

4[Luis sets a scuffed blue phone on the counter. Saira unlocks it and releases a long breath.]
SAIRA: That's mine. So, no prize for honesty?
LUIS: Just the phone you came in with.
[His desk radio crackles. A voice asks whether a glossy phone has been turned in.]
LUIS: Looks like somebody else has been searching, too.
[Saira looks toward the doors, where a younger student is speaking with a chaperone.]

5SAIRA: I dropped mine because I was rushing to get a picture after you called us back.
DEV: Ms. Chen doesn't have to hear that part.
[Saira types a message, pauses, then turns her screen toward Dev: “Found it. I stayed behind for a photo. I'm at the return desk.”]
SAIRA: If I only tell the easy part, she'll think I followed the plan.
[She sends the message.]

6[Ms. Chen appears in the doorway.]
MS. CHEN: Thanks for telling me. Next stop, stay with the group. You're sitting up front with me.
SAIRA: Fair.
[Behind them, the younger student takes the glossy phone from Luis and hugs it to his chest.]
DEV: You got your old phone and a front seat.
SAIRA: And he got his back.
[She pockets her phone without taking another picture and joins Ms. Chen.]

Trace the transformation

Choose one answer for each multiple-choice question. For evidence questions, distinguish a supporting detail from a detail that is merely true.

Which traditional event does Saira's response to the glossy phone most directly transform?

A. The imitator claims an object belonging to someone else.
B. The helper gives several objects to the truthful owner.
C. The woodcutter refuses a valuable object that is not his.
D. The helper returns the woodcutter's ordinary tool.

In these spoken sentences from paragraph 3, underline the one that explains Saira's refusal in terms of another owner's loss.

What does yours look like?There's a tiny yellow sticker inside the clear back.You could have walked away with an upgrade.And someone else would be standing here with an empty pocket.I'm trying to match things, not test anybody.

What is the most important effect of making Luis an attendant who is “not test[ing] anybody,” rather than a supernatural helper?

A. The valuable object becomes a promised gift rather than lost property.
B. The moral choice arises from an ordinary mix-up rather than a planned trial.
C. The search depends on a clever trick rather than an owner's description.
D. The attendant becomes the person facing temptation rather than the owner.

How does the play transform the traditional contrast between an ordinary axe and valuable axes?

A. It uses a desired camera and a cracked phone to make temptation recognizable.
B. It makes the tempting object useful only after the owner receives a reward.
C. It makes the recovered object valuable because it belongs to the attendant.
D. It replaces the contrast in value with a contrast between two identical phones.

What new complication does paragraph 5 add to the traditional pattern?

A. Saira must prove that a dishonest imitator has claimed the wrong object.
B. Saira must decide which of two recovered phones actually belongs to her.
C. Saira must be truthful about her behavior after recovering her property.
D. Saira must persuade a helper to return something that he wants to keep.

Which sentence from paragraph 5 best shows that Saira sees honesty as correcting a misleading impression, not just stating a true fact?

A. “I dropped mine because I was rushing to get a picture after you called us back.”
B. “Found it.”
C. “Ms. Chen doesn't have to hear that part.”
D. “If I only tell the easy part, she'll think I followed the plan.”

How does Dev's role differ from the greedy imitator's role in the traditional pattern?

A. Dev claims the valuable object and then returns it when his deception is exposed.
B. Dev supplies tempting suggestions without carrying out a separate dishonest attempt.
C. Dev controls the reward while pretending to help recover the missing property.
D. Dev loses his own property and competes with Saira to recover the better object.

Suppose Luis deliberately offered the glossy phone to test Saira and then gave it to her as a prize. Explain how that revision would make the play closer to the traditional pattern but weaken one of its modern ideas.

Analyze the new meaning

Consider how the ending changes the traditional tale's treatment of honesty and reward.

Which theme best expresses what the play adds to the traditional pattern?

A. Protecting a friend's reputation matters more than explaining an uncomfortable mistake.
B. Honest people can expect to receive better possessions after difficult choices.
C. Recovering lost property matters more than discussing how the loss happened.
D. Honesty can protect others and preserve trust without removing personal consequences.

10.

Which pair of details best supports the theme identified in question 9?

A. Classmates board the bus, and Luis checks a second tray.
B. Another student recovers his phone, and Saira must sit with Ms. Chen.
C. Dev waits beside Saira, and the attendant's radio crackles.
D. Saira checks her pocket, and her phone has a yellow sticker.

11.

What does staging the younger student's reunion with his phone add to the traditional reward pattern?

A. It makes another person's relief visible as a result of Saira's choice.
B. It reveals that the attendant has arranged a second test for Saira.
C. It suggests that the younger student deserves a more valuable reward.
D. It shifts the conflict toward deciding which student followed the rules.

12.

A reviewer says, “The play merely replaces axes with phones; its meaning stays the same.” Which response best evaluates that claim?

A. It overlooks the added confession and the replacement of a valuable prize with responsibility.
B. It overlooks the way Luis punishes Dev for encouraging Saira to claim someone else's phone.
C. It correctly identifies the younger student as an imitator who fails the same honesty test.
D. It correctly identifies Saira's improved camera as the modern version of the golden axe.

13.

Why is the traditional pattern still useful to a reader even though the play changes its ending? Explain how recognizing one borrowed event creates an expectation, then analyze how the play redirects that expectation. Use details from both texts.