2019: NY Grade 5 - ELA
By Sara Cowley
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Last updated 3 months ago
28 Questions
From the New York State Education Department. New York State Testing Program Grade 5 English Language Arts Test Released Questions June 2019. Internet. Available from https://www.nysedregents.org/ei/ela/2019/2019-released-items-ela-g5.pdf; accessed 3, May, 2023.
Excerpt from Snowflake Bentley
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.”
Excerpt from Gregor and the Sheep
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 often 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.
17. 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.
18. 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.
Excerpt from Seeds of Change: Planting a Path to Peace
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. The 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.
Excerpt from Wackies White House Pets
Excerpt from Wackiest White House Pets
by Gibbs Davis
MOST SUSPICIOUS
1. John F. Kennedy was the youngest man ever elected president. The popular president and his stylish wife, Jackie, captivated the nation. During Kennedy’s brief time in office he launched the space race. He also founded the Peace Corps to aid developing countries. Americans were fighting for their civil rights at home while the Cold War continued abroad. 1
2. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States didn’t trust each other. The United States suspected everything that came from the Communist Soviet Union. Spies were everywhere. So when the president’s daughter, Caroline, received a little dog from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, everyone was suspicious.
3. The little white dog was named Pushinka. (Pushinka means “fluffy” in Russian.) Pushinka was already a celebrity. Her mother, Strelka (“little arrow”), had been one of the first dogs sent into space. The Secret Service agents were suspicious of the fluffy little white dog. Was she a spy, too? The Russian dog didn’t have fleas. But did she have other bugs? Pushinka was checked for secret microphones and spying devices. She passed the test with flying colors.
4. When Pushinka first saw the Kennedys’ Welsh terrier, Charlie, it was puppy love. Soon, they had four pups. President Kennedy called them “pupniks.”
5. The Kennedys received another unusual pet. This one was from a magician. It was a rabbit named Zsa Zsa. The talented bunny could play the first five bars of “The StarSpangled Banner” on a toy golden trumpet!
BEST SWIMMER
6. Ronald Reagan was the oldest man ever elected president. He was also a former actor, appearing in over fifty films. Fearful of Communism, the president spent millions of dollars building up the military.
7. Everyone has a fish story. But only one president had a First Fish.
8. Reagan was recovering from an assassination attempt when he received something fishy in the mail. A ten-year-old boy had sent the president a goldfish in a plastic bag filled with water!
9. It didn’t take long for the First Fish to get into the swim of things. The tiny White House resident was given a place of honor in a tank bearing the presidential seal.
10. Like the First Fish, the president was a powerful swimmer. As a young man, Reagan worked as a lifeguard during summer vacations on the Rock River in Illinois. He put a notch in a log every time he saved a person from drowning. In seven summers as a lifeguard, he made seventy-seven notches.
11. First Families often complain that living in the White House is a lot like living in a fishbowl. This is one fish who would know.
BEST-SELLING PET
12. George Herbert Walker Bush’s inauguration in 1989 marked the two hundredth anniversary of the U.S. presidency. There had been many dramatic changes since our first president was in office. During Bush’s term, Americans saw the collapse of Soviet Communism. The late twentieth century was also a glorious time for White House pets.
13. President Bush’s springer spaniel, Millie, was voted “Ugliest Dog” in the Capital by Washingtonian magazine. Millie wasn’t going to let sleeping dogs lie. She put paw to paper and set the story straight about her life in the White House.
14. Millie dictated 141 pages of her best-selling “dogobiography” to former First Lady Barbara Bush. In it, the famous First Dog recalls her heavy White House schedule. She also describes sitting in on morning briefings, chasing squirrels, and playing in the White House flower beds. Not one to let fame go to her head, she didn’t neglect her duties as First Dog. She also mothered six puppies while in office.
15. The president was grateful to Millie. The published pooch had given practically all of her first year’s royalties (almost $900,000) to the First Lady’s favorite charity—the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. Still, President Bush was a little jealous that the media hound got so much attention.
16. In Millie’s Book, the spaniel writes, “I overheard the Bushes talking the other night. Some discussion about me keeping a lower profile.”
17 Every First Pet knows when to let the president be top dog.
MORE WACKY PET FACTS
18.The number one presidential pet has always been the dog. (George Washington had almost forty). Some First Dogs have been more popular than their presidents. President Harding was regarded as one of the worst presidents ever, but his upstanding Airedale terrier, Laddie Boy, became a national celebrity. (He even had his own special chair to sit in at cabinet meetings.) President Franklin Roosevelt’s beloved little black Scottie, Fala, became an international celebrity, joining FDR at important world peace-making meetings. He traveled abroad more than any other White House pet. Both top dogs received thousands of gifts, letters, and invitations from their fans.
Excerpt from Bloomability
Excerpt from Bloomability
by Sharon Creech
1. Lila and Guthrie were in two classes together. I didn’t have any classes with her, and only one with Guthrie. Often I saw them walking together after class, and what surprised me was that Guthrie was usually doing the talking while Lila listened. When I was with Lila, she talked—or complained—and I listened.
2. And sometimes when I was listening, I’d think of things my sister Stella had said. Stella had kept a journal of all the places we’d lived and had recorded things she’d learned in each town. There was one whole page from when we lived in Ohio, about how to take a bus. In Indiana, she wrote: Don’t talk. Just listen.
3. “What does that mean?” I asked her. “Why not talk?”
4. “Because people will laugh at your accent. Just listen. Wait and see how people talk and then talk like them.”
5. In Oklahoma, Stella wrote, Expect the worst.
6. “Why?” I asked. “Why expect the worst?”
7. “Because then,” Stella said, “you’ll be prepared. You won’t be caught off guard.”
8. I figured that because Stella was older, she knew what she was talking about, and I followed her advice. I listened, and I expected the worst, most of the time.
9. In Oregon she wrote, Dress plain the first day.
10. “Why?” I asked.
11. “Because if you wear cowboy boots in Oregon, people are going to laugh at you. Wait and see what people wear, and then dress like them.”
12. My mother overheard this. She said, “Stella! What a boring way to live. Don’t you want to be different from everybody else?”
13. “No, I do not,” Stella said. “I want to be the same.”
14. Sometimes I wanted to be the same, because then you’d have friends, and you wouldn’t be just the new kid, but inside, deep inside my bubble, I also wanted to be different. I wanted to be interesting, but I didn’t know how you got to be interesting.
15. Guthrie was different and he was interesting, and so was Lila. What I liked about them was that Guthrie was complete Guthrie through and through, and Lila was Lila through and through.
16. Guthrie was like no one else. He’d be walking down the hill and all of a sudden, he’d shout “Sono libero!” (I am free!) He pronounced libero like this: LEE-bear-oh. “Libero, libero, liberoooooo!”
17. He’d dive into the pool and shout, “Fantastico!” People liked being around him because when you were around him, you were happy, and you felt as if you could do anything he could do.
18. Lila was different in other ways, in ways that made people hate her much of the time. But what I thought was interesting about her was that she was always Lila. She knew what she thought and she wasn’t afraid to say what she thought, even if it was wrong or stupid or mean, although she herself never thought that what she said was wrong or stupid or mean. She thought that she was right and that everyone else was wrong, and she didn’t seem to care if she had friends or not.
19. I’d always felt as if I were in a sort of suspension, waiting to see how things worked, waiting to see who I was and what sort of life I might lead, and then moving on to a new town before I could figure out any of those things. Lila and Guthrie, though, seemed to already know who they were and they were already living their lives.
20. Sometimes Lila would say, “I’m the kind of person who—” and she’d finish that sentence in various ways: “I’m the kind of person who needs a room of my own”; and “I’m the kind of person who needs to talk about my feelings”; and “I’m the kind of person who has to have time to think.” And every time she’d say something like this, I’d wonder how she came to know what kind of person she was.
21. I felt like Miss Average. I was neither tall nor short, neither chubby nor slim. People often said I had nice eyes, but no one knew what color they were. “Are those hazel? Brownish? Gray? What color is that, anyway?” Teachers often said I had “a sweet face,” but when I looked in the mirror, it didn’t look all that sweet to me. On my report cards, teachers usually wrote things like Coming along and Satisfactory work and Very observant and Ought to speak up more.
22. I was all jumbled up most places, but especially here in Switzerland because it didn’t seem to be like any place I’d ever lived. This wasn’t just another new town and this wasn’t just another new school. Here everybody was from different places, not just me. Most of the people were new, not just me. Everybody had a different accent, not just me.
Excerpt from Cicada Summer
Excerpt from Cicada Summer
by Andrea Beaty
1. The cicadas are everywhere. They came back to Olena two days ago, after seventeen years of hiding in the ground and waiting. Waiting to climb into the sunlight. Waiting to climb the bushes and trees. Waiting to sing.
2. They waited so long. Then, thousands of them crawled out of the ground and up into the trees and bushes in just one night. Their song sounds like electricity buzzing on a power line, getting higher and higher and louder and louder until the air nearly explodes from the noise.
3. There are a hundred cicadas on the oak tree outside Mrs. Kirk’s sixth-grade classroom. I stand at the window watching them buzz from branch to branch. Their bodies are thick and clumsy, and I wonder how they can fly at all with their thin, little wings.
4. Then I see the cicada on the bookshelf next to me. It stares at me with its black marble eyes, and I stare back. I’m so close, I could thump it off the shelf if I wanted.
5. I could, but I don’t.
6. At first, no one else notices the cicada. The other kids are hunched over their spelling tests, ready to spell entangled or fearful or mottled or some other word.
7. This week’s words are adjectives, but Mrs. Kirk picked the wrong ones. She should have chosen words like sweaty or noisy or stifling. Stifling would be a good word today. It’s so hot, it feels like July and the buzzing of the cicadas squeezes into the room and pushes out the air until no one can breathe. It’s stifling.
8. I stare at the cicada, but even without looking, I know what’s going on behind me. In the front row, Judy Thomas is wound up like a tiger ready to pounce on the next spelling word. She presses her pencil so hard against the paper that the lead nearly breaks. When Mrs. Kirk says the next word, Judy will spell it as fast as she can in her perfect handwriting, and then look around to make sure she’s the first to finish. Of course she will be. She always is.
9. In the back row, where the hopeless cases sit—where there’s a desk with my name on it—Rose Miner is cheating off Tommy Burkette. Mrs. Kirk knows they’re doing it, but she’s too hot and too tired to care. Besides, the only person in the whole world who spells worse than Rose is Tommy, so it doesn’t make much difference anyway.
10. After a while, the cicada on the shelf starts buzzing and Rose screams like it’s Godzilla or something and Ricky Fitzgerald stands up and yells, “It looks like the cicada that got my grandma!”
11. Ricky Fitzgerald has told the story about the cicada that got his grandmother about a hundred times in the last two days. He says the last time the cicadas came around, one flew into his grandma’s hair and made her run crazy around the yard until Ricky’s grandpa came out with the sheep shears and lopped off half her hair.
12. I’ve seen his grandma’s hair. She has one of those beehive hairdos that’s tall and round and really hard from all the hairspray she uses. I can see why a cicada would land there. A hair cave like that would be a great place to get out of the sun.
13. That’s what I think, but Ricky says it attacked his grandma to suck out her brains and make her into a zombie.
14. Ricky Fitzgerald is a dork.
15. Mrs. Kirk sighs the same way she has about ninety-nine times since the cicadas showed up and Ricky started telling his story.
16. “Thank you, Ricky,” she says.
17. But before Ricky can say another word, Mrs. Kirk says, “Bobby, would you get rid of it, please?”
18. I could reach up and touch the cicada without trying, but Mrs. Kirk doesn’t ask me. Bobby Bowes gets up from his desk and walks right in front of me. He grabs the cicada in one hand and opens the window screen with the other. He tosses the insect outside, closes the window screen, and sits down again without a word. He doesn’t say, “Move, Lily,” or anything. He doesn’t even notice me standing there.
19. He doesn’t notice because I’m invisible.
20. Most people would say that’s a lie. They’d say that I’m not invisible because they can see me as plain as day. Most people are wrong. It’s not my skin that makes me invisible. It’s my silence. My silence and the trick I do with my eyes where I never look anybody in the face.
21. You can tell everything about a person by looking in their eyes. I don’t want anybody to know anything about me, so I look away.
22. I’ve been invisible for two years now.
Bloomability & Cicada Summer