2021: NY Grade 8 - 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 8 English Language Arts Test Released Questions 2021. Internet. Available from https://www.nysedregents.org/ei/ela/2021/2021-released-items-ela-g8.pdf; accessed 3, May, 2023.
Excerpt: Fly for Your Life
Alan is on a volcano on Titan, a moon of Saturn. As the story opens, Alan is stranded on its summit in his space crawler. Luckily, he has brought along his mechanical wings.
Excerpt from Fly for Your Life
by John Frizell
1. Alan knew there was no way back to the base and no way the crew there could help him remotely—the other crawler was down for maintenance. He could go down this side of the stream for 23 kilometers, to a flat area where the flowing liquid would spread out and be shallow enough to cross; then go back 23 kilometers to the far side of the bridge. One problem: he would definitely run out of air before he got there.
2. Then Alan thought of the folded flight wings he had attached to his suit. Could he fly across the river and then walk to the base? Some quick calculations showed it wouldn’t work. He had enough air, but the battery that powered the heater of the suit he wore to stay alive on Titan was only good for an hour, not the four-hour walk it would take to reach the base. Spacewalks were usually done trailing a power cable plugged in to the suit. The cable carried power from the crawler to supplement the suit’s battery. Without the supplemental power, he would freeze solid in 10 minutes once the battery was exhausted.
3. Alan knew flying the whole way was impossible. Even with Titan’s thick atmosphere and low gravity the suit made flying hard work, worse than running uphill carrying a sack of cement. No one could stay aloft for more than 10 minutes. It would be at least a half-hour flight to the base.
4. He needed more than wings alone to get back alive. Then it came to him. Bolted to the side of the crawler was a squat, black cylinder containing compressed nitrogen at 200 bar, compressed Titanian atmosphere in fact, used for cleaning gunk off the crawler’s treads. Alan struggled with the bolts, working carefully in the searing cold with tools as brittle as glass. When he had the cylinder off, propped up, and pointing at the sky, he put his wings on, and then took them off, repeating the task until he could do it without thinking about it. . . .
5. He pulled the power cable out of his suit’s hip socket and, before he could change his mind, gave a sharp tug on a line that he had attached to the valve of the pressure cylinder. The cylinder hissed like a giant snake, as high-pressure nitrogen blasted out, and then shot into the sky. A length of climbing rope he had attached to it went taut and snatched him into the air, where he was buffeted and tossed by the jet of nitrogen pouring down on him. It was like being caught under a breaking wave, pounded again and again by the surf. He was directly under the cylinder, using his weight and drag to keep the nozzle pointed down as the cylinder lofted him into Titan’s sky. The ground beneath, blurred by the motion, made it impossible to gauge height or direction.
6. Time slowed; his shuddering world narrowed to the readout of the Titan Positioning System (TPS)—the icy moon’s equivalent of GPS. Gradually, the pounding lessened as the rate of climb shown on the readout passed its peak and began falling. Alan waited. Just before it hit zero, he cut the rope. The cylinder, relieved of his drag, flew off, dwindling to a black dot and then disappearing into the empty sky above. Now he was coasting upward, propelled by the momentum imparted to him by the nitrogen rocket. He was high in the air, but already he was slowing under the drag of the thick atmosphere. He had to get the wings on before the downward fall began. Once he started to move with some speed, he would begin to spin and never get them on. The first wing stuck and he had to take his arm out of the loops and try again. . . .
7. He was gathering speed on his way down before he got the second one on. He spread his wings and rolled into a comfortable position, soaring over the moon’s dimly lit surface. The TPS showed that he was heading away from the base. He banked in an easy curve and settled on a course for home. All he had to do was hold the wings rigid and enjoy the ride. He took an occasional flap, just for fun. . . .
8. As Alan glided toward the base, he flapped more oen, watching the height-abovesurface and distance-to-target displays. As they unwound, an unpleasant feeling, like a trace of the frigid atmosphere outside, crept into his stomach. His elevation was dropping dangerously, with over three kilometers le to go on distance-to-target. He could see details on the surface more clearly now, because he was flying so low. . . .
9. Alan forced himself to stay calm. Panic would mean disaster. He started flapping his wings faster, faster, faster. . . . He could feel himself lifting with every beat of the massive appendages. Faster, faster, faster. . . . His descent rate began to slow, but the muscles in his arms burned with pain. . . .
10. Time stretched out endlessly
11. The TPS buzzed loudly in his helmet. Target. The station’s beacon was directly below him. He could barely feel his arms, but something made them stop flapping. He gratefully fell out of the sky, wrapped in a ball of pain, with barely the strength to flare his wings one last time for a soft landing. . . .
12. Then he saw someone running toward him with a power cable in hand. Voices boomed into his helmet. It sounded like the whole station was in the control room waiting to see if he had made it.
13. “Alan! ALAN! Say something! Can you move? Are you receiving this?” He recognized the voice of the base leader. . . .
14. As the crew lifted him carefully onto a stretcher, he looked up at Titan’s hazy sky. I flew for my life today, he thought. I survived. That’s the only record that matters.
Exerpt: River of Dreams
This excerpt is from a book about the history of the Hudson River.
Excerpt from River of Dreams
by Hudson Talbott
1. By the twentieth century, New York City had long since reached its destiny of becoming the most powerful city in America. In less than 300 years it had grown from a tiny Dutch outpost in the wilderness to the business capital of the world. It was a city built on dreams.
2. But it was made out of bricks and cement that had come from the banks of the Hudson. The river which had fed all those dreams was now fading into the background. New York didn’t seem to need the river anymore, except as a sewer. And that’s what it became.
3. Industry on the river had made some New Yorkers filthy rich. But it had just made the river filthy. Garbage, factory waste, plant chemicals and the raw sewage of the cities and towns along its banks were dumped directly into the river. The water turned greenish brown, except by the GM plant, where it turned red or yellow or whatever color they were painting the cars that day.
4. The fishing industry collapsed. The few fish that survived were too poisonous to eat. Smog from the factory smoke and dust from the cement plants blanketed the valley. And it was all legal.
5. Most people don’t start out with dreams of polluting a river. But it was often the result of people chasing their dreams of wealth with little care of how they reached it. The Hudson Valley had always drawn them.
6. But now there were other dreamers in the valley, with their own dreams of wealth. They dreamed of the wealth of wildlife in a healthy forest, the abundance of fish in oxygen-rich water, and the great fortune of living in a beautiful river valley.
7. So perhaps it was a matter of time before the two types of dreamers would meet each other—in court.
8. In 1963, Con Edison, New York City’s power company, proposed a plan for constructing the largest hydroelectric pumping station ever built. The plan called for carving out a gigantic hole in the side of majestic Storm King Mountain on the Hudson River.
9. But then they met Franny Reese. Franny was a longtime valley resident with a simple point to make: the mountain could not speak for itself. If she didn’t speak for it, who would?
10. Franny and a group of like-minded people founded Scenic Hudson and took on the power company in a landmark court case. Con Ed challenged the right of private citizens to participate, but the court sided with the citizens, in the ruling now known as the Scenic Hudson Decision.
11. After dragging out the case for seventeen years, Con Ed finally gave up and Storm King survived unblemished. It was the beginning of the environmental movement in this country, and once again, the Hudson Valley was the birthplace.
12. More and more people joined the movement as they realized how much difference each of us can make.
13. The love of their land was still alive in the hearts of Americans, and now that it was aroused again, things began to change.
14. Many new laws and new citizens’ groups have been inspired by those early heroes of the environment, and their work has begun to bring the Hudson back to life.
15. The Mahicans called it “The River that Flows Both Ways.” Slowly we are learning that taking care of the river is the only way that the river can take care of us.
16. Fifty years have passed since I dreamed of going to New York to see the river that shares my name, and thirty-five years since that dream came true. I live in the Hudson Valley now, grateful to all those who came before me, following their dreams to this river, building this nation, sharing its beauty, securing its future.
17. It’s now my turn to help in keeping the river of dreams flowing, for all those dreamers yet to come.
Excerpt: A la Carte
Excerpt from A la Carte
by Tanita S. Davis
1. “Homework?” My mother mouths the word exaggeratedly, eyebrows raised, and I roll my eyes. Frowning, she points with her chin to the side door that leads to the stairs. I roll my eyes again, mouthing, Okay, okay, not needing her to pantomime further what she wants me to do. I hate the thought of leaving the clattering nerve center of the restaurant to wrestle with my trigonometry homework in my mother’s quiet office downstairs.
2. “Order!”
3. The bright lights and swirl of noise and motion are muffled as the kitchen door swings closed behind me.
4. It’s hard to remember a time when the restaurant hasn’t been the center of our lives. Mom used to be a copy editor and wrote food features for our local paper, the Clarion, and she met Pia when she did a write-up on the culinary school Pia attended. Pia thinks it was fate that Mom wanted to invest in a restaurant at the same time Pia wanted to buy the old bank building.
5. La Salle Rouge doesn’t serve much in the way of “kid” food, since the menu doesn’t cater to people my age on a cheap date, but I’ve loved everything about it from the first. I started experimenting with being a vegetarian when I turned fourteen, but Pia still found things to feed me and taught me to be creative with vegetables and tofu. I like to think I’m the best-fed vegetarian in the state of California.
6. Pia’s been really good about teaching what she knows, and I decided early on that this is the work I want to do—get out of school and get into the kitchen for good. Mom and Pia have created a popular French-Asian-Californian fusion restaurant that has gotten great reviews from food critics. They took the best of each other’s tastes— Mom’s traditional Southern flavors and Pia’s French training combined with her vegetable- and spice-savvy Cambodian tastes—and pulled off what one food critic called “stylized food with unique flavor combinations in an intimate setting.”
7. Whatever that means.
8. Three years ago, when I started high school thirty pounds heavier than everyone in my class, Mom and I came up with a light menu for La Salle Rouge, and it’s been such a popular idea that Mom lets me come up with tasty, low-calorie desserts, which is one of my favorite things to do. It hardly seems fair that I have to walk away from all of that just to do trigonometry, but my mom says I have to finish school before I concentrate on cooking. She says it’s smarter to have a “backup plan,” and she’s made me apply to plenty of colleges and check out business majors just in case I ever want to do anything else with my life. I guess that makes sense if you’re anybody other than me. When I turn eighteen, I already know what I’m going to do.
9. First, I’m going to buy a plane ticket to D.C. and go to Julia Child’s kitchen at the Smithsonian and leave roses. They don’t let you walk through it, but somewhere—I don’t know where—I’m going to leave a bouquet and a little note for her. Julia Child is my patron saint.1 She’s the queen of all reasons people can do anything they want in life. Saint Julia didn’t start cooking until she was practically forty, and she went on to do TV shows and make cookbooks and be this huge part of culinary history. She never got too fancy, she never freaked out, and she was never afraid to try new things. I want to be just like her—except maybe get famous faster.
10. The second thing I’m going to do is buy myself a set of knives. Pia swears by this set of German steel knives she got when she graduated, but I’ve seen the TV chef Kylie Kwong use a phenomenal-looking ceramic knife on her show on the Discovery Channel. Either way, knives are what the best chefs have of their very own.
11. The third thing I’m going to do, after I get back from Washington and get my knives, is . . . get discovered. Somehow. I know I’m going to have to pay my dues, but I’m so ready for my real life to start. It’s not something I admit to a lot, but my real dream is to be a celebrity chef. Do you know how many African American female chefs there aren’t? And how many vegetarian chefs have their own shows? The field is wide open for stardom. Every time I watch old episodes of Saint Julia, I imagine that I have my own cooking show. The way celebrity chefs do it now, I could also have a line of cooking gear, cookbooks, aprons, the works. People would know my name, ask for my autograph, and try my recipes. All I have to do is finish my trig homework and get back into the kitchen.
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1 patron saint: an inspiring person admired for his or her work
Excerpt: Wheels of Change
Excerpt from Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way)
by Sue Macy
1. Women’s rights crusader Elizabeth Cady Stanton was in her eighties during the heyday of the bicycle, and no evidence exists to show that she actually ever rode one. But there was no better or more eloquent advocate for women and the wheel. In 1895, Stanton contributed an article to the American Wheelman celebrating this “wonderful new style of locomotion.” In the article, titled “The Era of the Bicycle,” she pointed out that cycling was increasing people’s mobility, eliminating the cost of feeding and housing horses, and encouraging the building of good roads. However, she saved her greatest praise for the bicycle’s effects on women. “The bicycle,” she wrote, “will inspire women with more courage, self-respect and self-reliance and make the next generation more vigorous of mind and of body; for feeble mothers do not produce great statesmen, scientists and scholars.”
2. For all the practical benefits of the two-wheeler, the fact is that it brought about a cosmic shift in women’s private and public lives. With the rise of industry and the move from a rural to an urban economy in the 19th century, American women had become increasingly confined to their homes. Young girls could play outside, but when they matured, their freedom of movement was greatly restricted. “At sixteen years of age, I was enwrapped in the long skirts that impeded every footstep,” remembered Frances Willard, who in 1895 wrote a best-selling account of how she learned to ride a bicycle at age 53. “I have detested walking and felt with a certain noble disdain that the conventions of life had cut me off from what . . . had been one of life’s sweetest joys.”
3. While wealthier women were saddled with long skirts and restrictive corsets, those who were less well off worked anonymously in mills and factories. All in all, the result was the same. Except in a few instances, the public image of America was male. Politicians, soldiers, business leaders, and even the leading athletes in the new sports of baseball and football were all men. But the bicycle changed that. Suddenly, women were leaving their homes to cycle and socialize on country roads and city streets. Bicycle racers such as Louise Armaindo and Frankie Nelson had their exploits splashed all over the papers. Bicycle manufacturers, intent on mining an untapped market, showed female models in their advertisements. Thanks to the wheel, women were starting to be seen and heard in public life.
4. It was not a stretch for some cyclists to see the possibility of a larger role for women in the world. When she conquered the wheel, Frances Willard was a former university president and the longtime president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, which fought to prohibit the use of alcoholic beverages and to win women the right to vote. Willard saw parallels between learning to ride and learning to live. “I began to feel that myself plus the bicycle equaled myself plus the world, upon whose spinning wheel we must all learn to ride,” she wrote. “He who succeeds, or, to be more exact in handing over my experience, she who succeeds in gaining the mastery of [a bicycle], will gain the mastery of life.”
5. For decades, Willard, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and many others, had been working toward increased political and economic rights for women. Now the bicycle brought a taste of independence to women on a very personal level, and some of them took the opportunity to express their discontent with old traditions and expectations. In August 1895, a cyclist named Ann Strong caused a stir when she compared the value of a bicycle to that of a husband in the Minneapolis Tribune. “I can’t see but that a wheel is just as good company as most husbands,” she declared. “I would as lief1 talk to one inanimate object as another; and I’d a great deal rather talk to one that can’t answer than one that won’t.” Strong then contrasted the joy of cycling with the challenges of raising a family. “You can make your wheel tidy over night,” she said, “and it never kicks off its shoes the very last minute, and never smears itself with molasses. When you are ready you can start. No little elbows are stuck in your ribs; there is no wiggling; screams at the cars or at the candy stores. You glide along, silently, smoothly, swiftly.
6. Some stated the liberating effects of the bicycle with less sarcasm. “The bicycle has brought to women a healthful, wholesome means of securing a degree of freedom and independence that no amount of discussion regarding ‘women’s rights’ would ever have produced,” wrote the L.A.W. Bulletin and Good Roads magazine in 1898. Meanwhile, Munsey’s Magazine assessed the impact of the wheel on women in a special bicycle-themed issue. “If she has ridden her bicycle into new fields, becoming in the process a new creature, it has been gradually and unconsciously,” the editors wrote.
7. “She did not have to be born again in some mysterious fashion, becoming a strange creature, a ‘new woman.’ She is more like the ‘eternal feminine,’ who has taken on wings, and who is using them with an ever increasing delight in her new power.” Indeed, many bicycle companies at home and abroad did put wings on the women in their advertisements, emphasizing that they had taken flight.
8. Not all publications treated the emergence of the “new woman” with the same level of approval. Some mocked her, while others just seemed baffled by her. Her new way of dressing, in bloomers or divided skirts or skirts with shortened hems, certainly disturbed the old social order, but so did her confidence and daring. These traits led commentators to worry that the differences between the sexes were being blurred, a fear that was reinforced as the four newest states—Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho—granted women the right to vote in the 1890s. Would the bicycle help bring about a new kind of equality between men and women? Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her colleagues certainly hoped so. At any rate, the image of a female cyclist quickly became associated with efforts to win more rights for women.
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1 lief: happily