The Blueprint on the Corkboard
Jordan stared down at the blank lined paper on his desk, his mechanical pencil hovering motionless above the top blue rule. Tacked to the corkboard beside him was an oversized calendar, its squares mocking him with their empty white boxes. Track tryouts were exactly eight weeks away, and his single, scribbled aspiration from the previous season still haunted him from the margin of his notebook: Get faster.
"Thatâs not a goal, Jordan; thatâs just wishful thinking," his older sister, Elena, remarked as she walked into the room, tossing her college backpack onto the rug. She leaned over his shoulder, tapping the blunt eraser of his pencil. "If you want to shave twenty seconds off your mile split before spring, you need a framework, not just good intentions. Have you ever heard of SMART goals?"
Jordan slumped back into his desk chair, crossing his arms skeptically. "Sounds like something a corporate seminar made up to sell planners."
"Maybe, but athletes and engineers swear by it for a reason," Elena countered, pulling out a fresh index card and scribbling five vertical letters: S-M-A-R-T. "It stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Your current goal fails almost every single metric."
- aspiration:
- A strong desire, hope, or ambition to achieve something.
- framework:
- A basic supporting structure or set of guidelines used to organize a plan.
- skeptically:
- In a manner showing doubt or disbelief.
- quantify:
- To measure, express, or state the exact quantity or amount of something.
- baseline:
- A starting point or standard used for comparison when measuring future progress.
- feasible:
- Possible, practical, and able to be accomplished successfully.
- crystallized:
- Became definite, clear, and firmly formed.
- actionable:
- Capable of being acted on or put into practical effect.
More sheets from this passage
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fix the sentence
Sentences from the passage with the capitals and punctuation removed â rewrite each one correctly.
vocabulary worksheet
Match the passage words to their meanings, then fill the missing words back into real sentences.
writing prompts
Two writing tasks that build on the passage, with plenty of lines to write on.
- All 4 sheets as one workbookPro
One PDF with a cover, contents page and every answer key at the back.
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About this fiction passage for 8th Grade
âThe Blueprint on the Corkboardâ is a fiction reading passage about SMART Goals, written for 8th Grade. It takes about 4 minutes to read (555 words) and comes with an interactive quiz and a printable worksheet with comprehension questions and an answer key.