2022: 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 2022. Internet. Available from https://www.nysedregents.org/ei/ela/2022/2022-released-items-ela-g5.pdf; accessed 3, May, 2023.
In West Africa, the Harmattan is a dry, dust-filled wind
Excerpt from A Scrap and a Robe
1 The West African Harmattan whipped up a billow of dust. Suddenly Sali spied a scrap of glorious orange damask cloth turning in the hot wind like a flame. She followed as it danced down a street she didn’t know very well. She skipped over holes and skirted people on chairs
2 All at once the wind died down, and the scrap settled gently on the scratchy, sandy road.
3 Sali picked up the cloth and gazed at it with admiring eyes. She turned it this way and that in the sun and imagined herself in a flowing dlokibani made of such cloth. This was a treasure, and she would take it home for her little wooden doll. It would surely make a lovely headpiece for that lucky one.
4 Sali wandered back the way she had come, slowly now. At the corner of the street, she passed the table vendor, who was selling his dusty packets of tea and two-pill packs of aspirin. She passed Ami’s mother, roasting peanuts and selling them by the handful. She turned onto the larger street and passed a plastic-goods store that displayed rows and rows of brightly colored plastic plates, bowls, and teapots. She glanced into the next shop and then stopped short. It was a fabric shop! Here on the high counter was an entire bolt of the same wondrous cloth she held in her hand!
5 The next day Sali went back to the cloth shop. She stood near the door and watched the storekeeper. He measured and cut, as one person after another bought pieces of cloth. Her prized orange damask was back on a high shelf to the rear of the store.
6 After a while the shopkeeper looked at Sali. “Why do you stand so long at the door?” he asked.
7 Sali took a deep breath and said, “I would like to help you in the store till I could earn enough of that orange cloth to make a dlokibani for myself.”
8 The orange fabric glowed in a shaft of light from the uncovered bulb at the back of the store.
9 “That is very special and expensive cloth, little one,” the shopkeeper told her.
10 So she swept the courtyard and threw away scraps. She pushed big rolls of cloth back and forth. She ran to buy cough drops and peanuts and kola nuts for the shopkeeper. For days and days she worked.
11 Finally, one day the store owner lifted down the lustrous roll of orange damask and measured out several yards. “You’ve worked well for this cloth, Sali,” he said. “I thank you.”
12 Sali rushed straight home with her treasure. Carefully she placed the cloth in her trunk.
13 But how was she to get the dloki made? Sali did not know how to sew. Her mother always had their clothes made by a tailor who sat in a tiny shop several blocks from their house.
14 Sali went and stood under a tree near the tailor’s shop. She watched the people come and go. The tailor would whip out his measuring tape and see how tall the people were, how fat they were, how long their arms, how short their necks. He measured every part of them.
15 After almost a whole day the tailor noticed Sali.
16 “What are you doing there, little girl?” he asked.
17 “I have some beautiful cloth,” she said, “and I want it sewn into a dlokibani. Could I work for you to pay for sewing it into a robe for me?”
18 The tailor agreed. Once again Sali worked for days and days. She swept and fanned the tea coals and held scissors and brought thread. At last, the tailor said, “Bring me the cloth, Sali.
19 Sali rushed home and brought back the satiny, shining cloth. She also brought her doll, its small head still neatly wrapped in the swatch of orange. The tailor took his tape and measured Sali, shoulder to ankle, shoulder to elbow, left shoulder to right shoulder. Then he started cutting the billows of orange fabric.
20 The next day was an important holiday called Tabaski. Drums were beating in many neighborhoods. Relatives and friends came to visit Sali’s family. Sali slipped quietly away. Soon her mother missed her. “Now where has Sali gone?” she exclaimed.
21 Just then, Sali walked in, proudly wearing a beautiful orange dloki with a matching headdress. In her arms she carried her doll, dressed exactly as she was!
“Janet Guthrie: Lady in the Fast Lane ” from Profiles in Sports Courage
1 It was no surprise that Janet Guthrie excelled at one of the most dangerous sports on Earth. She had always loved adventure and daring new experiences.
2 Janet was born on March 7, 1938, in Iowa City, Iowa, and lived on a farm for the first few years of her life. Her father, an airline pilot, later moved the family to South Florida, where Janet took up flying.
3 At 13, she had already flown an airplane. At age 16, Janet decided she wanted to try a free-fall parachute jump. In free-fall, the parachutist jumps out of a plane without opening the chute. Aer falling several hundred feet at more than 100 miles an hour, the cord is pulled to open the chute. Then, if all goes well, the parachutist floats safely to the ground.
4 Her father wouldn’t hear of it. “Absolutely not,” he said. “No free-fall!”
5 But Janet persisted. Finally, her father gave in. “Just one time,” he said, “but you have to be careful and do it the right way.”
6 He would allow her to jump only on two conditions: He would fly the plane and she would receive parachuting lessons before the jump.
7 Since there were no parachuting schools in South Florida at the time, Janet’s father hired a pro to give her private lessons. In her autobiography, Janet Guthrie—A Life at Full Throttle, Janet said the pro taught her how to pull the rip cord that opened the chute, how to absorb the shock after landing, and how to fasten the helmet so it wouldn’t fly off.
♦♦♦
8 By the time she was 21, she had earned a commercial pilot’s license. She flew whenever she could break away from her classes at the University of Michigan.
9 After graduating, Guthrie got a job as a physicist in the aerospace industry. She saved her money for an entire year and bought a car. Guthrie wasn’t satisfied with just any car. She chose a Jaguar XK 120—the sleek and popular sports car that she had dreamed about since she was a teenager
10 At first, Guthrie enjoyed just driving the car around Long Island, outside New York City. Then she heard about a local sports car club where members could compete. She loved her car and wanted to see how it would do on a track. Soon she was entering races—and winning them. 10
11 Excited by her success, Guthrie attended a driving school in Connecticut. She was a natural. Her instructor, veteran driver Gordon McKenzie, liked the way she handled her car. He suggested she try auto racing.
12 A thrill shot through Guthrie. What a great idea. Off she went to enroll in a racing car drivers’ school sponsored by the Sports Car Club of America. Guthrie swapped her Jaguar for a higher-priced model built especially for racing—the XK 140. Before long she taught herself how to take apart and rebuild its engine like a pro.
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13 Guthrie’s career started to pick up speed.
14 She entered races all over the United States, finishing in some of the country’s most celebrated long-distance competitions. In 1973, she won the North Atlantic Road Racing Championship. A champion, yes, but a tired champion. By then she had been racing for 13 years. She was exhausted, broke, and thinking of leaving the sport.
15 That’s when she got the phone call. Someone named Vollstedt was asking her to drive his car in the 1976 Indy 500. No woman had ever driven in that race. This has to be a prank, thought Guthrie. But Vollstedt, an auto designer and builder from Oregon, wasn’t kidding. Could she drive a “championship” car? That was the big question.
16 With their open cockpits, wide wheelbases, and rear engines, championship cars were much different than the closed sports cars Guthrie had been accustomed to driving for many years.
17 “Before she would agree to drive for me,” Vollstedt said, “she wanted to see if she could handle the car.”
18 Vollstedt was wondering the same thing, too. He arranged for a secret test at the Ontario Motor Speedway near Los Angeles.
19 To get into top physical shape for Vollstedt’s test, Guthrie did exercises in front of her TV. One day she lost her balance, landed hard on her le foot, and fell to the floor. The doctors told her she had broken a bone and they put her foot in a heavy cast. How am I going to drive a racing car? she worried. Will I miss my big chance?
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20 Broken ankle and all, Guthrie stepped into an unfamiliar car. She hit the accelerator. When her car got up to speed, Guthrie couldn’t believe the feeling. “What a thrill,” she said. “It was like going to the moon.”
21 Vollstedt was impressed with her time—an average speed of 178.52 miles per hour and a top speed of 196 mph.
22 Test passed.
23 She had showed Vollstedt she could drive the car. Now she had to show the rest of the world.
What Is Lake-Effect Snow?
1 It was the early morning hours in Buffalo, New York. Trouble was brewing. Temperatures had plummeted and strong squalls began to blow across neighboring Lake Erie. Even though it was October, snow was falling faster than an inch per hour by the next afternoon.
2 Thee storm, called the “October Surprise” by locals, caught the Buffalo area off-guard. In a very short period of time, up to 27 inches of heavy snow fell. The snow damaged trees and power lines, shutting down electricity and blocking roads.
3. This storm was the result of a phenomenon called “lake-effect snow.” It’s one of the main reasons why areas near big lakes, like the Great Lakes, get such remarkable snowstorms. Such storms usually occur between November and February, not October. It just so happened that all of the ingredients for lake-effect snow came together in a remarkable way that October.
4. Lake-effect snow forms when cold air passes over the warmer waters of a lake. Water holds on to heat more than air. As a result, below freezing air often passes over much warmer water. This causes some lake water to evaporate into the air and warm it. This warmer, wetter air rises and cools as it moves away from the lake. When it cools, it dumps all that moisture on the ground. If it’s cold enough, that moisture becomes snow.
5 If the winds and temperatures are right, the air acts like a big sponge that sops up water from the lake and wrings it out on land. The direction of the wind is important— if the wind is blowing in a direction that covers more of the lake, the air will take in more water. Thee greater the temperature difference the more water the air will take in.
6. All that water picked up from the lake normally travels no farther than about 25 miles away before falling, but it can sometimes travel as far as 100 miles away! That moisture can make for a whole lot of snow. Luckily for people living near large lakes, lake-effect snow generally slows down around February. That's when the lakes freeze over, making i impossible for the air to steal moisture away from the lake.
7 Not surprisingly, buffalo is one of the snowiest cities in the country. Conditions are frequently right for lake-effect Snow. To many who live there, massive snowstorms are a regular part of life. But don't think you could get more snow days by moving to an area that experiences lake-effect snow. People there are well trained in snow removal.
The Raindrops' New Dresses
“We’re so tired of these gray dresses!”
Cried the little drops of rain,
As they came down helter-skelter
From the Nimbus cloud fast train.
5 And they bobbed against each other
In a spiteful sort of way,
Just like children when bad temper
Gets the upper hand some day.
Then the Sun peeped out a minute.
10 “Dears, be good and do not fight,
I have ordered you new dresses,
Dainty robes of purest white.”
Ah! then all the tiny raindrops
Hummed a merry glad refrain,
15 And the old folks cried: “How pleasant
Is the music of the rain!”
Just at even, when the children
Had been safely tucked in bed,
There was such a rush and bustle
20 In the dark clouds overhead!
Then those raindrops hurried earthward,
At the North Wind’s call, you know,
And the wee folks, in the morning,
Laughed to see the flakes of snow.
Excerpt from Dogs Helping Dogs
1 If man’s best friend is a dog, then who is a dog’s best friend? That would be Rover. Or Glow, or Ivan, or Raina. These four canines recently donated valuable pints of blood to their fellow pooches. And they did it without having to travel far from home: They visited an animal bloodmobile.
2 Similar to the Red Cross vehicles for humans, the University of Pennsylvania’s traveling veterinary lab goes to where the donors are to make it easier to give. Thee bloodmobile makes weekly rounds through suburban Philadelphia and New Jersey. Kym Marryott is manager of Penn’s Animal Blood Bank. “You don’t really think about it until you actually need it,” Marryott told the Associated Press. “Just like in people, dogs need blood too.”
Helping Paws
3 Like humans, not every dog is eligible to donate blood. The pooches are screened for health first. Dogs must have the correct blood type, weigh at least 55 pounds and be younger than 8 years old. About 150 dogs participate in the program. Each donates three or four pints a year, which can help animals suffering from illnesses like cancer or an accidental trauma like being hit by a car. One pint can save up to three dogs.
4 Owners volunteer their pet for the short procedure, which requires no sedation. That’s when a patient is given medicine to calm him or her down. Marryott said it’s the dog that ultimately chooses to lie still and give. “If (the dog) wanted to get up and leave, he could,” she said. “But they’re really good about it, they trust their owner.” . . .
5 Just like people, the furry donors get a snack and a heart-shaped “U of P Blood Donor” sticker immediately after giving. In addition, they receive free blood screenings and dog food to take home.
