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CAASPP Grade 5 ELA - Performance Task

Last updated about 1 month ago
4 questions
Untitled Section 1
You have found a current article about capuchin monkeys on a website about service animals. The author is a veterinarian who writes articles for educational publications.

Monkey Helpers
by Tamra Orr

An Unusual Set of Helping Hands
Every day people make countless moves that they tend to take for granted. They scratch their noses and pull on their backpacks. People grab something to eat and push up their glasses. They flip the pages of their textbooks and turn off their lights. For people living with injuries to the spinal cord, however, these basic movements are very difficult. For some, they are even impossible. For the past 35 years, more than 160 people with injuries to the spinal cord have found support from a very unusual set of helping hands: those of specially trained capuchin monkeys.

Capuchin monkeys are very small. Some weigh less than eight pounds, even when fully grown. They are also extremely smart. In the wild, they have shown the ability to pick up tools and use them to solve problems. Their hands can easily carry small tools. This makes it easier for them to handle modern items such as remotes and cell phones.
Although capuchin monkeys are smart and are able to handle small tools, not all types of monkeys are ideal to use as service animals. Some monkeys, such as howler monkeys, are too large or strong. Monkeys who have not been properly trained are also unreliable.
They might behave in ways that are hard to predict. For example, a monkey could suddenly hurt a person if it got angry or frightened for some reason.

While some people believe capuchin monkeys are wonderful service animals, not everyone agrees. Capuchins are small, easy to train, and able to bond, or form close relationships, with humans. However, they are still, in the end, wild animals. April Truitt, director of the Primate Rescue Center in Kentucky, says that having a wild animal in your home may put both the animal and the owner at increased risk of getting injured. She points out that it is possible for capuchins to become violent suddenly and this can be a danger to their owners and others.

Long Before School Starts
Long before capuchin monkeys begin their training, they have already spent years around humans. Born in a Massachusetts zoo, they must live with foster families as long as twelve years before beginning their training on how to assist a person with a disability.
During this time, they are taught how to share a house with humans. They get used to being around pets. They even learn basic tasks like how to take baths. This requires a great deal of time and effort.

Learning to Help
Capuchin monkeys learn how to assist people with disabilities at Helping Hands, otherwise known as the monkey college, in Boston, Massachusetts. This college is not quite like going to a traditional school. Every day, for three to five years, capuchin monkeys learn new skills. Their lessons do not focus on reading and writing though. Days are spent learning how to load a DVD into a player and push play, or how to open and close microwave doors. This education takes time, patience, and money. The cost of educating just one monkey is close to $40,000. Finally, after up to five years of training, the animals finish school. Now the monkeys are ready to go and live with someone who needs them to help make life a little bit easier.

The Simple Things
Having a capuchin monkey in the house is not the same as having a dog or cat. Because of their training and their intelligence, these monkeys are able to do an amazing number of chores for the person who is disabled and cannot do them alone. Along with operating microwaves and DVD players, these service animals can also turn lights off and on for their new owners. They can open bottles and flip the pages of a book for their owner. They can even reach out and scratch an annoying itch.
Every year, Helping Hands places dozens of monkeys in homes of people with disabilities. The monkeys take good care of their owners. In return, the owners feel safer and more able to do tasks that so many others take for granted.


Sources Used

ABC News. (n.d.). Tearful Kentucky senator wants monkeys to be made service animals. Retrieved from: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/01/tearful-kentucky-senator-wants-monkeys-to-be-made-service-animals/

CBS News. (n.d.). Monkeys lend helping hand to disabled. Retrieved from: http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/monkeys-lend-helping-hand-to-disabled

DiBlasio, N. (2013, July 4). Monkey see. Monkey do. USA Weekend. Retrieved from: http://www.usaweekend.com/article/20130705/HEALTH/307050007/Graduates-of-Monkey-College-give-their-companions-a-sense-of-purpose

Helping Hands. (n.d.). Training center. Retrieved from:
http://www.monkeyhelpers.org
Required
1

Click on the boxes to match each source with the idea or ideas that it supports.
Some ideas may have more than one source selected.

Source
#1:
Monkey
Helpers
Source #2:
Animals
Helping
People
Source #3:
New
Service
Animal
Rules
People who own businesses have to consider the well-being of all of their guests.
Being smart and able to handle small objects makes certain animals more appropriate than other animals to assist people who have a disability.
Required
3

The sources discuss how service animals help people. Explain what you have learned about how service animals help people. Use one detail from Source #1 and one detail from Source #2 to support your explanation. For each detail include the source title or number.

Required
3

Which source would most likely be the most helpful in understanding how a service animal is trained? Explain why this source is most likely the most helpful.
Give at least two details from the source to support your answer.

Service Animals Opinion Performance Task
Required
10

Now begin work on your opinion paper. Manage your time carefully so that you can:
  1. plan your opinion paper.
  2. write your opinion paper.
  3. revise and edit the final draft of your opinion paper.
Word-processing tools and spell check are available to you.

For Part 2, you are being asked to write an opinion paper that is several paragraphs long. Type your response in the box below. The box will get bigger as you type.

Remember to check your notes and your prewriting/planning as you write and then revise and edit your opinion paper.