What is the main idea of the story?

Nia learns that a visible repair can gain an unexpected public use instead of needing to disappear. (Nia first sees the purple patch as a mistake, then keeps it after observing that people use it as a shared landmark.)

Why does Nia decide not to replace the purple tile?

It is sound, useful as a landmark, and need not become waste. (The supervisor calls the tile sound, people rely on its location, and Nia chooses to use the new white tile on another damaged place.)

What does “uniform” mean in the phrase “uniform wall”?

The same in appearance throughout (Every other tile is white, so the uniform wall is visually the same until the single purple square provides a point of difference.)

How does the fruit seller use the purple tile?

The seller uses it when giving a driver directions. (The second paragraph says the fruit seller tells a delivery driver to turn left at the purple tile.)

The Purple Tile: Level 2 Reading Comprehension Questions

Only one tile in the repair box was purple. Every other tile in West Market underpass was white. Nia set the bright square into an empty patch and aligned the grout, but she left thinking the repair looked like a mistake.

The next afternoon, a fruit seller told a delivery driver to turn left at the purple tile. By Friday, a violinist was meeting a student there, and two children counted their steps from it to the stairs. The mismatch did what the uniform wall could not: it gave the long corridor an address.

When the white tiles arrived, Nia returned with her tools. Her supervisor asked whether a sound tile should become rubble merely to hide a useful difference. Nia studied the clean purple square, then used the new tile on another damaged patch. She sealed the purple grout and marked the landmark on the maintenance map. She had thought a good repair had to disappear. This one finished its work by becoming easy to find.

Comprehension questions