If I Ever Get Out of Here

Reading Check questions are designed for in-class review on key plot points or for quick verbal or written assessments. Multiple Choice and Short Answer Quizzes create ideal summative assessments, and collectively function to convey a sense of the work’s tone and themes.

Part 1, Chapters 1-3

Reading Check

1. With whom does Lewis share a room?

2. In what grade is Lewis?

3. What interest do Lewis and George have in common?

Multiple Choice

1. Why is Lewis getting his hair cut?

A) He wants a new cut for the new school year.

B) He wants to fit in better.

C) He wants to keep his hair short.

D) He wants to impress his cousin.

2. Why does Zach think that George is friendly to Lewis?

A) George is just the new kid trying to make friends.

B) George wants to use him to get to Summer Barnes.

C) George likes that Lewis gives other kids a hard time.

D) George doesn’t know that Lewis lives on a reservation.

Short-Answer Response

Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Why is Lewis’s braid significant?

2. What is the author’s purpose in naming each chapter for a song by either the Beatles or Wings? (Wings was the band Paul McCartney started after leaving the Beatles.)

Part 1, Chapters 4-7

Reading Check

1. Lewis sees two students at school whom he recognizes from the reservation. Who are they?

2. What does George call “The Road to Hell”?

3. For what holiday does George invite Lewis over?

Multiple Choice

1. Why does being on the free lunch program cause students to make fun of Lewis?

A) They associate Native Americans with needing others’ money.

B) They think the lunches are terrible.

C) They know that Lewis doesn’t need it.

D) They make fun of him for everything.

2. What is noticeable about George being invited places by other students?

A) It suggests that George is quickly become very popular.

B) It suggests that George will soon start to ignore Lewis.

C) It suggests that Lewis is often excluded because he is Native American.

D) It suggests that Lewis has burned bridges with other students.

Short-Answer Response

Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What does it mean that Lewis wishes to be both a “Dear Boy” and a Native American?

2. Why doesn’t Lewis want George to come visit?

3. What do we as readers learn about boarding schools from Lewis’s narration?

Part 2, Chapters 8-10

Reading Check

1. What does Albert get Lewis for Christmas?

2. With whom does George start going out?

3. From whom does Lewis start learning guitar?

Multiple Choice

1. Why does Lewis leave after his conversation with George about where his grandparents worked?

A) Lewis doesn’t think George accepts him for who he is. 

B) Lewis thinks that George’s family is trying to make him forget his roots.

C) Lewis feels like he doesn’t fit in with George’s world because of George’s grandparents’ occupations. 

D) Lewis realizes that George is only friends with him because he thinks Lewis is strange.

2. What does George’s response regarding how people treat Lewis imply?

A) It implies that George is naïve and doesn’t realize that Lewis is right.

B) It implies that George is racist.

C) It implies that George doesn’t really care about Lewis’s feelings.

D) It implies that George doesn’t think he needs to be friends with Lewis anymore.

Short-Answer Response

Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Why does Lewis play “You’re My Best Friend” for George?

2. Why can Evan get away with bullying other students?

3. Why does Albert give Lewis the money for the concert?

Part 2, Chapters 11-13

Reading Check

1. How does Lewis get a ticket to the concert?

2. What excuse does Lewis give for not inviting George to his house?

3. To what event on the reservation does Lewis invite George and his father?

Multiple Choice

1. Besides the music, what does Lewis enjoy about the concert?

A) He likes sitting near George and Mr. Haddonfield. 

B) He feels like he is just another fan rather than an outsider.

C) He is reminded of his family and his uncle Albert.

D) He sees potential for his future career.

2. How does Mr. Haddonfield react when George tells him that Stacey wouldn’t like a gift from the reservation?

A) He doesn’t think anything of it.

B) He implies that he dislikes how Stacey treats George.

C) He grows concerned that Stacey has a problem with Native Americans.

D) He suggests that they stop and get her something on the way home instead.

Short-Answer Response

Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What is significant about Lewis’s ID?

2. How does Lewis bond with Mr. Haddonfield during the concert?

3. What is symbolized in Chapter 12 by George and Lewis looking through a telescope at Venus and Mars?

Part 2, Chapters 14-17

Reading Check

1. Who else is in Lewis’s music class?

2. Who is responsible for ruining Miss Ward’s synthesizer?

3. What does Lewis do after Mr. Doyle confronts him about Evan?

Multiple Choice

1. How does Miss Ward’s plan to let Lewis play his tribe’s music backfire?

A) She hopes that it will help him to feel better after not getting into Choraliers, but it just draws more attention to him.

B) She hopes that it will make the other students like him more, but the other students continue to pick on him.

C) She hopes  that it will spur positive attention from others, but students become less interested in Lewis.

D) She hopes that it will help him get into the Choraliers, but it does not.

2. Why does Evan hate Native Americans?

A) He learned from his dad.

B) He has never taken the time to learn about Indigenous culture.

C) He misinterprets historical information.

D) He was once assaulted by the sons of Innis’s aunt. 

3. Why does Mrs. Tunny tell Lewis not to tell on Evan?

A) She knows that no one will believe him.

B) She thinks that it will only make things worse for him.

C) She is going to confront Mr. Doyle herself.

D) She is working on a plan to get revenge on Evan.

Short-Answer Response

Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How is Innis’s comment that teachers can be racist too an example of foreshadowing?

2. How does George respond when Lewis tells him that Evan is picking on him because he is Indigenous?

3. Why does Lewis think he should listen to Mrs. Tunny?

Part 3, Chapters 18-20

Reading Check

1. Who prevents Lewis from confronting Evan with the bat?

2. What does Albert give Lewis?

3. To what concert does George want to take Lewis?

Multiple Choice

1. Why is Evan sent to a vocational training school?

A) He admits to bullying Lewis.

B) His father makes the decision.

C) He assaults a white student.

D) He makes the decision himself.

2. What does Lewis learn about being a Native American student?

A) He learns that the school will protect him.

B) He learns that the school associates his heritage with causing trouble.

C) He learns that those at school will ignore him.

D) He learns that his every move is being watched while at school.

Short-Answer Response

Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What does Lewis learn about the real reason Evan doesn’t like Native Americans?

2. Why does Mr. Doyle take Lewis’s jacket?

3. How are Lewis’s guitar lessons being paid?

Part 3, Chapters 21-23

Reading Check

1. Why are the roads closed on the way back from picking up the concert tickets?

2. Who is rude to Lewis when he calls his mother at the fire hall?

3. Who was the student Evan assaulted, causing Evan’s removal from school?

Multiple Choice

1. What is symbolic about the storm and of the way it forces Lewis, George, Mr. Haddonfield, and the Reinigers into the fire hall?

A) It symbolizes the conflict between Lewis and the Reinigers.

B) It symbolizes the chaos of living on the reservation.

C) It symbolizes how Lewis feels angry toward Evan.

D) It symbolizes how George and Evan fought over Lewis.

Short-Answer Response

Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Why is it significant that George swore to rile Evan up so Evan would hit George?

2. What does the title of Chapter 23, “The Long and Winding Road,” symbolize regarding the relationship between Lewis’s and George’s families?

Part 3, Chapters 24-26

Reading Check

1. To what location are the Haddonfields being transferred?

2. What did Lewis’s mom cook to make the Haddonfields feel welcome?

3. Who might have sent Lewis the Beatles album at the end of the novel?

Multiple Choice

1. What is the most accurate reason that Lewis feels ashamed when Mr. Haddonfield suggests that the roof has caved in?

A) He never wanted Mr. Haddonfield to recall his childhood.

B) He never wanted the Haddonfields to see his family’s level of poverty.

C) He never wanted his family to require outside help.

D) He never wanted his mom to think he was purposely spending time away from the reservation.

2. Why might have Lewis’s grandmother have threatened his mother’s teacher for trying to teach her beadwork at school?

A) She didn’t want attention drawn to Lewis’s mother Indigenous culture.

B) She wanted to teach her daughter herself.

C) She believed that the school was trying to brainwash her daughter.

D) She knew her daughter did not have the talent for beadwork.

Short-Answer Response

Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How does George come to realize that Lewis had lied to him about his mother?

2. What was the particularly special gift for which Mr. Haddonfield had been looking for his wife?

3. What might be the real reason that Mr. Haddonfield pays for renovations to Lewis’s home?