NEW YORK STATE COMPONENT RETEST ENGLISH COMPONENT A … · NEW YORK STATE COMPONENT RETEST ENGLISH...

NEW YORK STATE COMPONENT RETEST

ENGLISH

COMPONENT A MODULE 3

FRIDAY, MAY 15, 2009

SCORING KEY

AND RATING GUIDE

Multiple Choice Key

1 3 2 4 3 2 4 1 5 4

Component A

(used for 2-point responses that refer only to the text)

Score Point 2

• presents a well-developed paragraph • provides an appropriate explanation • supports the explanation with the information from the text • uses language that is appropriate • may exhibit errors in conventions that do not hinder comprehension

Score Point 1 • provides an explanation

or • implies an explanation

or • has an unclear explanation

AND • supports the explanation with partial or overly general information from the text • uses language that may be imprecise or inappropriate • exhibits errors in conventions that may hinder comprehension

Score Point 0 • is off topic, incoherent, a copy of the task and/or text, or blank • demonstrates no understanding of the task/text • is a personal response

Component A

(used for 2-point responses that refer to the text and the graphic)

Score Point 2

• presents a well-developed paragraph addressing the task • demonstrates a basic understanding of the text and graphic • supports the explanation with the information from both the text and graphic • uses language that is appropriate • may exhibit errors in conventions that do not hinder comprehension

Score Point 1

• provides an explanation

or • implies an explanation or • has an unclear explanation

AND

• supports the explanation with partial or overly general information from the text and/or graphic • uses language that may be imprecise or inappropriate • exhibits errors in conventions that may hinder comprehension

Score Point 0

• is off topic, incoherent, a copy of the task and/or text, or blank • demonstrates no understanding of the task/text • is a personal response

English Component A Retest – Module 3 – May ’09 2

Directions: Read the passage and study the graphic on the following pages. Write your answer to each multiple-choice question on your answer sheet. Then write your responses to questions 6 and 7 in the space provided on your answer sheet. You may use the margins to take notes as you read.

City Slinkers

Ken Ferebee was one of the first to notice. He’s a National Park Service biologist assigned to Rock Creek Park, a 1,755-acre swath of woods, ball fields and picnic areas in the heart of Washington, D.C. Since 2004, he’d observed that deer killed by cars were mysteriously being dragged away, and he’d heard strange yips and yowls. Then, a year ago, he saw a coyote dart across a road just after dawn. The coyote, that cunning canine of wide-open spaces, has come to the nation’s capital. And to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities. In fact, coyotes have spread to every corner of the United States, shifting their behaviors to fit new habitats and spurring researchers to cope with a worrisome new kind of carnivore:1 the urban coyote. In a clearing near the edge of Rock Creek Park, Ferebee stomps through dense thornbushes and peeks under the roots of a fallen tree at a coyote den. He says it probably sheltered newborn pups a few months earlier. Ferebee says that largely because of their taste for livestock, “Coyotes have a bad rap, like wolves.” He stoops to look for coyote scat. “We’re not going to catch them,” he adds. “I don’t see it as a bad thing for a park. I see it as good for keeping animal populations in control, like the squirrels and the mice.” Coyotes originally inhabited the middle of the continent, between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River, and Alberta, Canada, and central Mexico. In 1804, Lewis and Clark dubbed the animal the “prairie wolf.” In 1823, naturalist Thomas Say gave it the Latin name Canis latrans, or barking dog. One of its most celebrated traits is its trickiness; coyotes have been outsmarting trappers for centuries. Recently, biologist Jon Way, who has been studying the predators in Massachusetts, set a trap near the Boston Airport. Coyotes somehow snagged the rib meat put out as bait without getting caught. In the Navajo version of the creation of the world, old men had just finished embroidering the sky in brilliant patterns when the trickster Coyote ran across their work, scattering the stars. The coyote’s craftiness made the animal a notorious pest to Western sheep farmers and, occasionally, cattle ranchers. In the mid-19th century, cowboys carried sacks of strychnine in their

1 carnivore: a meat eater

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saddlebags to inject into animal carcasses, to poison the coyotes that scavenged them. A 1927 Literary Digest article said Kansas ranked the coyote “in the category of evils alongside beer, cigarettes and Wall Street.” Ranchers and hunters, as well as a federal agency called Predator and Rodent Control—a forerunner of today’s Wildlife Services—trapped, shot and poisoned more than a million coyotes in the 1900s. It’s still one of America’s most hunted animals; in 2003, Wildlife Services killed 75,724 of them. Yet the coyote has persevered.2 By the end of the 20th century, the animal had colonized the tundra of Alaska, the tropical forests of Panama and the urban jungle of New York City. (The only major landmass in the eastern United States where you can’t find the coyote is Long Island, although they have been spotted trying to swim across Long Island Sound.) How has the coyote pulled off this extraordinary feat? “I guess if you wanted to use one word, it’d be ‘plasticity,’” says Eric Gese, a predator ecologist at Utah State University. Coyotes can live alone, as mated pairs, or in large packs like wolves; hunt at night or during the day; occupy a small territory or lay claim to 40 square miles; and subsist on all sorts of food living or dead, from lizards and shoes, to crickets and cantaloupes. Although their native diet consists of small rodents, Gese has seen a pack take down a sick elk in Yellowstone National Park. “Coyotes are without a doubt the most versatile carnivores in America, maybe even worldwide,” says Marc Bekoff, an animal behaviorist who has studied them for 30 years. People unwittingly helped coyotes flourish when they exterminated most of the wolves in the United States. Coyotes became top dog,3 filling the wolf’s ecological niche.4 Deforestation and agriculture opened up previously dense tracts of forest, and human settlements, with their garbage, vegetable gardens, compost piles and domestic pets, provided food. The expansion of coyotes into urban areas, though, is recent. Until the 1990s, the farthest that coyotes had ventured into Chicago was to forested reserves near the city limits. But “something happened,” says Stan Gehrt, a wildlife biologist at Ohio State University, “something we don’t completely understand.” Within ten years the coyote population exploded, growing by more than 3,000 percent, and infiltrated the entire Chicago area. Gehrt found territorial packs of five to six coyotes, as well as lone individuals, called floaters, living in downtown Chicago. They traveled at night, crossing sidewalks and bridges, trotting along roads and ducking into culverts and underpasses. One pair raised pups in a drainage area between a day care facility and a public pool; a lone

2 persevered: continued to survive 3 top dog: number one 4 niche: place, position

35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75

4 English Component A Retest – Module 3 – May ’09

female spent the day resting in a tiny marsh near a busy downtown post office. Perhaps most surprising to Gehrt, Chicago’s urban coyotes tended to live as long as their parkland counterparts. No one knows why coyotes are moving into cities, but Gehrt theorizes that shrewder, more human-tolerant coyotes are teaching urban survival skills to new generations.

—Christine Dell’Amore

Originally appeared in SMITHSONIAN, March 2006.

80


Graphic

Source: Table modified from “Coyote (Canis latrans) Food Habits in Three Urban Habitat Types of Western

Washington.” Northwest Science, Vol. 71. No. 1. 1997. Copyright by the Northwest Scientific Association.


Multiple-Choice Questions

Directions (1–5): Select the best suggested answer to each question and write its number in the space provided on the answer sheet. The questions may help you think about ideas and information you might want to use in your written responses. You may return to these questions any time you wish.

I104G10860093 1 The main purpose of this passage is to

(1) explain the life cycle of coyotes (2) persuade readers to hunt coyotes (3) describe the spread of coyotes into cities (4) emphasize the importance of coyotes to

humans I104G10160044 2 According to the passage, coyotes continue to

stay alive because of their ability to

(1) outsmart the wolves (2) make friends with humans (3) avoid heavily populated areas (4) survive in many environments

I104G10660062 3 The author’s use of “plasticity” (line 49) is a

reference to coyotes’

(1) intensity (2) adaptability (3) sensitivity (4) brutality

I104G10370031 4 According to the graphic, in rural areas, birds

and reptiles make up approximately how much of the coyotes’ diet?

(1) 1.6% (2) 2.7% (3) 5.0% (4) 0.5%

I104G10370074 5 According to the graphic, the “Miscellaneous”

food type most often eaten by coyotes in urban areas is

(1) birds (2) reptiles (3) garbage (4) dog food


Short-Response Questions Directions (6–7): Write your responses to questions 6 and 7 in the space provided on the answer sheet. I104G1107008S

6 In a well-developed paragraph of three to five sentences, explain what Stan

Gehrt means when he states that coyotes are learning “urban survival skills” (line 80). Support your explanation with information from the text.

I1 I104G1087011S

7 In a well-developed paragraph of three to five sentences, discuss the factors

contributing to the spread of the coyote population. Support your explanation with details from the text AND the graphic.

Component A - Module 3 - Question # 6

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