2021: NY Grade 5 - ELA
By Sara Cowley
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Last updated about 2 months ago
28 Questions
From the New York State Education Department. New York State Testing Program Grade 5 English Language Arts Test Released Questions 2021. Internet. Available from https://www.nysedregents.org/ei/ela/2021/2021-released-items-ela-g5.pdf; accessed 3, May, 2023.
Excerpt from Waste Not, Want Not by Teresa Bateman
Excerpt from Waste Not, Want Not
by Teresa Bateman
1. My mother believed in using things up. We always squeezed the toothpaste tube until it was as sharp as a razor, and we cleaned our plates, even when it was liver-andonions night. . . .
2. Mom’s frugality was legendary. She could make one chicken come back in a dozen meals as variously disguised lefovers. Her favorite saying was “waste not, want not.” Josh and I weren’t sure what that meant, but it probably explained why Mom was into recycling long before it became popular. It also explained why the “Affair of The Hat,” as it later became known, was so strange.
3. The Hat deserved capital letters. It was about three feet across, made of green straw and covered with big plastic daisies, two red peonies, and an orange bow. I might have said it was “dog ugly,” except that wouldn’t sit well with our dog, Mutt.
4. Great-aunt Marjorie had given The Hat to Mother on one of her visits to our farm. It was supposed to keep the sun off Mother’s delicate complexion while enhancing her rural beauty (whatever that meant). . . .
5. When Aunt Marjorie returned to the city, Josh and I held our breath to see what would happen to The Hat. We could see that Mom’s thrifty nature and fashion sense were in pitched battle. She couldn’t justify throwing The Hat away—it was nearly new and had a lot of use left in it—but neither could she stomach wearing it. She tried pulling off the daisies and peonies, but they were stuck on tight, as were the perky orange ribbons that held The Hat in place. She’d have to find some other solution.
6. One day Josh and I came down to breakfast and noticed that The Hat was missing from the hook by the door. We looked at each other, then scouted the house. It wasn’t hard to spot. Mother had installed it in the parlor as a lampshade.
7. Our parakeet, Pete, chirped inquiringly from his cage as Josh and I decided to see how The Hat looked in full lampshade glory. We pulled the chain.
8. Pete tweeted once, then dropped like a stone from his perch. We ran to his cage, and Josh suggested mouth-to-beak resuscitation. Then we glanced over at the lamp. The light shining through the peonies made them look like two big red eyes glaring at you. No wonder Pete had fainted. We plucked The Hat from the lamp and went to tell Mom. Reluctantly she hung it back up on the hook by the door. . . .
9. The next morning she headed out the door, The Hat filled to the brim with turkey feed. Josh and I watched as Mother approached the turkeys scavenging in the barnyard. The minute those turkeys sighted The Hat, they ran gobbling toward the barn door and dived in a panic into the haystack. Mom dumped the turkey feed in the barnyard and walked back to the house, her shoulders drooping. . . .
10. She threw The Hat to the floor, raised her foot, and screamed, “THIS HAT IS FOR THE BIRDS!” Josh and I stepped back, waiting for her foot to come crashing down.
11. “It is not for the birds,” Josh blurted. “They hate it!”
12. It was as though time stood still. Then we heard a strange sound. Mother was laughing!
13. We shook our heads. She’d finally gone over the edge—there she stood, one foot in the air, laughing like a hysterical flamingo.
14. Then she put her foot down . . . on the floor. She picked up The Hat and headed upstairs where we heard boxes being shuffled around in the attic. . .
15. When she came down, she was dragging a body. It was wearing Grandpa’s old overalls, Uncle Paul’s flannel shirt, and the shoes Josh had outgrown last year. Its head was a flour sack, stuffed full of straw from an old tick, and on that head perched The Hat.
(tick = mattress)
16. Mom hauled the stuffed body outside and set it up on a post in the middle of the cornfield. And that’s where it stayed.
17. Our corn crop that year was particularly good. For some reason the birds steered clear of our fields and raided the neighbors’ instead. Maybe it had something to do with our scarecrow, I don’t know. All I do know is that from then on, we rarely saw crows on our property except during the month of June.
18. That’s when Great-aunt Marjorie comes to visit.
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Excerpt from Snowflake Bentley
by Jacqueline Briggs Martin
1. In the days when farmers worked with ox and sled and cut the dark with lantern light, there lived a boy who loved snow more than anything in the world. Willie Bentley’s happiest days were snowstorm days. He watched snowflakes on his mittens, on the dried grass of Vermont farm fields, on the dark metal handle of the barn door. He said snow was as beautiful as butterflies, or apple blossoms.
2. He could net butterflies and show them to his older brother, Charlie. He could pick apple blossoms and take them to his mother. But he could not share snowflakes because he could not save them.
3. When his mother gave him an old microscope, he used it to look at flowers, raindrops, and blades of grass. Best of all, he used it to look at snow. While other children built forts and pelted snowballs at roosting crows, Willie was catching snowflakes. Day after stormy day he studied the icy crystals.
4. Their intricate patterns were even more beautiful than he had imagined. He expected to find whole flakes that were the same, that were copies of each other. But he never did. Willie decided he must find a way to save snowflakes so others could see their wonderful designs. For three winters he tried drawing snow crystals. They always melted before he could finish.
5. When he was sixteen, Willie read of a camera with its own microscope. “If I had that camera I could photograph snowflakes,” he told his mother. Willie’s mother knew that he would not be happy until he could share what he had seen.
6. “Fussing with snow is just foolishness,” his father said. Still, he loved his son. When Willie was seventeen his parents spent their savings and bought the camera. It was taller than a newborn calf, and cost as much as his father’s herd of ten cows. Willie was sure it was the best of all cameras.
7. Even so his first pictures were failures—no better than shadows. Yet he would not quit. Mistake by mistake, snowflake by snowflake, Willie worked through every storm. Winter ended, the snow melted, and he had no good pictures. He waited for another season of snow. One day, in the second winter, he tried a new experiment. And it worked! Willie had figured out how to photograph snowflakes! “Now everyone can see the great beauty in a tiny crystal,” he said.
8. But in those days, no one cared. Neighbors laughed at the idea of photographing snow. “Snow in Vermont is as common as dirt,” they said. “We don’t need pictures.” Willie said the photographs would be his gift to the world. While other farmers sat by the fire or rode to town with horse and sleigh, Willie studied snowstorms. He stood at the shed door and held out a black tray to catch the flakes.
9. When he found only jumbled, broken crystals, he brushed the tray clean with a turkey feather and held it out again. He waited hours for just the right crystal and didn’t notice the cold. If the shed were warm the snow would melt. If he breathed on the black tray the snow would melt. If he twitched a muscle as he held the snow crystal on the long wood pick the snowflake would break. He had to work fast or the snowflake would evaporate before he could slide it into place and take its picture. Some winters he was able to make only a few dozen good pictures. Some winters he made hundreds. . . .
10. But his snow crystal pictures were always his favorites. He gave copies away or sold them for a few cents. He made special pictures as gifts for birthdays. He held evening slide shows on the lawns of his friends. Children and adults sat on the grass and watched while Willie projected his slides onto a sheet hung over a clothesline.
11. He wrote about snow and published his pictures in magazines. He gave speeches about snow to faraway scholars and neighborhood skywatchers. “You are doing great work,” said a professor from Wisconsin. The little farmer came to be known as the world’s expert on snow, “the Snowflake Man.” But he never grew rich. He spent every penny on his pictures. Willie said there were treasures in snow. “I can’t afford to miss a single snowstorm,” he told a friend. “I never know when I will find some wonderful prize.”
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Excerpt from Gregor and the Sheep
by Toby Rosenstrauch
1. In a valley in the highlands of Scotland, there once lived a young tenant farmer, Gregor, and his widowed mother. Although they worked hard, they could never accumulate enough money to buy the flock of sheep they longed to have, for their small parcel of land produced only modest amounts of oats and barley. To make matters worse, MacTavish, the owner of this and many other crofts, always found reasons not to pay the farmers all they had earned. . . .
(crofts = small farms)
2. When he opened the door each morning and looked out, he saw MacTavish’s house on top of a mountain, a magnificent stone mansion surrounded by red, pink, and violet rhododendrons. Gregor oen climbed the slope and stood outside the iron gates, wondering what fine furnishings and delicious foods lay within. Neighbors claimed that MacTavish owned many houses and even kept a chest of gems under his bed. As Gregor, his mother, and their neighbors grew gaunt and pale with hard work and not enough food, they railed against MacTavish, who had swindled all of them at one time or another.
(swindled = cheated or tricked)
3. One day, as Gregor listened to the bagpipe music that drifted from the open windows of MacTavish’s mansion, he had an idea. That night, when his mother was asleep, he emptied the jug that held their money and counted it. After putting back a few coins for food, he put the rest in his pocket. The next morning, he hurried to the market, where he went from farmer to farmer, asking the prices of sheep for sale. Gregor found many handsome animals, but they were all too expensive. When he reached a stall with scrawny and sickly sheep, the owner beckoned to him. . . .
4. Gregor shook his head and began to walk away. The man grabbed his sleeve and whispered in his ear, “This one will make her owner rich!” Gregor examined the old sheep with spindly legs and dirty, unkempt wool—the worst of the lot. “If she will make me rich,” said Gregor, “how is it that she has not done so for you?”
5. The man paused, thinking. “I have not had her long enough!”
6. “Nonsense,” said Gregor, but he gave the man his money and led the pitiful animal home.
7. When his mother saw what he had bought with their money, she burst into tears. “My foolish son, what have you done? Now we will starve, and no one will help us!”
8. “Do as I say, Mother, and we will be rich. I promise.”
9. She wanted to believe him. Wiping her eyes with her ragged sleeve, she asked what he wanted her to do.
10. “Go to market and tell everyone that your son has a sheep that will make whoever owns her rich,” said Gregor. . . .
11. One morning, a carriage arrived. Two servants opened the door and a stout, welldressed gentleman emerged. His Tartan kilt was made of the finest wool, his ascot was pure silk, and his shoes had silver buckles. On his fat fingers were eight gold rings, and his pomaded hair glistened in the sun. It was MacTavish!
(Tartan kilt = traditional clothing worn by Scottish Highlanders)
(ascot = a type of necktie)
12. Gregor bowed as if to royalty. MacTavish looked at him sternly. “I have come to rid you of the unfortunate sheep that everyone is talking about,” said MacTavish, opening his sporran. “I can pay your price and I will have her, even though she has done nothing for you, I see.” MacTavish sneered at Gregor.
(sporran = a small bag worn at the waist for holding personal items)
13. Gregor hugged Dear One. “I will not sell her to you!”
14. At that, MacTavish, whose servants were helping him into his carriage, turned and marched back. “I will pay anything,” he said. “Name the price.”
15. Gregor was ready. “That,” he said, pointing up to the mansion above them. “I will have the dwelling and everything in it—furniture, utensils, even the chest of gems under your bed.
16. “Done,” said MacTavish. The next day, Gregor and his mother moved into the mansion that had once belonged to MacTavish, and MacTavish brought Dear One to the market so that all might see he could indeed own anything he wanted. Then MacTavish and the sheep rode away in his carriage to another of his houses in a valley beyond the mountains.
17. After months had passed and the sheep had done nothing to increase MacTavish’s riches, he realized he had been swindled. Furious beyond speech, he returned to the mansion, but Gregor would not open the gates.
19. “I have been cheated!” shouted MacTavish.
20. “You have not been cheated,” said Gregor. “I was the owner of the sheep, and she has made me rich, hasn’t she?”
21. “Yes, but . . . ,” sputtered MacTavish.
22. "Then you got what you paid for.” Gregor turned and walked away.
23. Soon afterward, Gregor sold the chest of gems and bought the huge flock of sheep he and his mother had always wanted. He shared the rest of his fortune with the other poor families of the valley who had been cheated by MacTavish.
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This is the true story of a Kenyan woman named Wangari Maathai.
Excerpt from Seeds of Change: Planting a Path to Peace by Jen Cullerton Johnson
1, “Come,” Wangari’s mother called. She beckoned her young daughter over to a tall tree with a wide, smooth trunk and a crown of green, oval leaves.
2. “Feel,” her mother whispered.
3. Wangari spread her small hands over the tree’s trunk. She smoothed her fingers over the rough bark.
4. “This is the mugumo,” her mother said. “It is home to many. It feeds many too.”
5. She snapped off a wild fig from a low branch, and gave it to her daughter. Wangari ate the delicious fruit, just as geckos and elephants did. High in the tree, birds chirped in their nests. The branches bounced with jumping monkeys.
6. “Our people, the Kikuyu of Kenya, believe that our ancestors rest in the tree’s shade,” her mother explained.
7. Wangari wrapped her arms around the trunk as if hugging her great-grandmother’s spirit. She promised never to cut down the tree. . . .
8. When Wangari finished elementary school, she was eleven years old. Her mind was like a seed rooted in rich soil, ready to grow. Wangari wanted to continue her education, but to do so she would have to leave her village and move to the capital city of Nairobi. Wangari had never been farther than her valley’s ridge. She was scared.
9. “Go,” her mother said. She picked up a handful of earth and placed it gently into her daughter’s hand. “Where you go, we go.” . . .
10. As graduation neared, Wangari told her friends she wanted to become a biologist.
11. “Not many native women become biologists,” they told her.
12 “I will,” she said.
13. Wangari watched sadly as her government sold more and more land to big companies that cut down forests for timber and to clear land for coffee plantations. Native trees such as cedar and acacia vanished. Without trees, birds had no place to nest. Monkeys lost their swings. Tired mothers walked miles for firewood. . . .
14. When Wangari visited her village she saw that the Kikuyu custom of not chopping down the mugumo trees had been lost. No longer held in place by tree roots, the soil streamed into the rivers. e water that had been used to grow maize, bananas, and sweet potatoes turned to mud and dried up. Many families went hungry.
15. Wangari could not bear to think of the land being destroyed. Now married and the mother of three children, she worried about what would happen to the mothers and children who depended on the land.
16. “We must do something,” Wangari said.
17. Wangari had an idea as small as a seed but as tall as a tree that reaches for the sky. “Harabee! Let’s work together!” she said to her countrywomen—mothers like her. Wangari dug deep into the soil, a seedling by her side. “We must plant trees.” . . .
18. Wangari traveled to villages, towns, and cities with saplings and seeds, shovels and hoes. At each place she went, women planted rows of trees that looked like green belts across the land. Because of this they started calling themselves the Green Belt Movement.
19. “We might not change the big world but we can change the landscape of the forest,” she said.
20. One tree turned to ten, ten to one hundred, one hundred to one million, all the way up to thirty million planted trees. Kenya grew green again. Birds nested in new trees. Monkeys swung on branches. Rivers filled with clean water. Wild figs grew heavy in mugumo branches.
21. Mothers fed their children maize, bananas, and sweet potatoes until they could eat no more