Virginia SOL-style Practice Test 1 — Reading (Grade 4)

1 On a cold morning in late winter, a farmer walks through a snowy forest, checking the trees. She is not looking for firewood. She is looking for sap, the watery liquid inside a tree. In a few weeks, that sap will become maple syrup.

Waiting for the Right Weather

2 Sugar maple trees store sugar in their trunks and roots during the cold months. When spring is near, the sap inside the tree begins to flow. The best weather for collecting sap is a stretch of freezing nights followed by sunny days that are above freezing. These changing temperatures build up pressure inside the tree, and the pressure pushes the sap out. This time of year is called the sugaring season. It usually lasts only four to six weeks.

Tapping the Trees

3 To collect sap, farmers drill a small hole, about two inches deep, into the trunk. Then they gently hammer a small spout, called a spile, into the hole. Sap drips out of the spile into a bucket or into plastic tubing that carries it to a large tank. Farmers usually tap only trees that are at least ten inches wide, so the tree is not harmed. The small hole heals over time, and a healthy tree can be tapped year after year.

Boiling Down

4 Fresh sap looks like water and tastes only a little sweet. That is because most of it is water. To turn it into syrup, farmers boil the sap in a wide, flat pan called an evaporator. As the sap boils, the water turns into steam and floats away. What is left becomes thicker, darker, and much sweeter. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make just one gallon of syrup!

5 The boiling happens in a building called a sugarhouse. On boiling days, clouds of sweet-smelling steam pour out of an opening in the roof. Many families visit sugarhouses in early spring to watch the work and taste the fresh syrup.

Fun Fact: Native Americans were making maple sugar long before European settlers arrived. They showed the settlers how to collect sap and boil it down.

My kite is a bird made of paper and string;
It tugs at my hand like a restless thing.
It wants to climb higher than rooftops and trees,
To dance with the clouds and to race with the breeze.

I run down the hill with the wind at my back,
And the string spins away from the spool — clickety-clack!
It dips and it wobbles, it stumbles, then — whoosh!
It leaps to the sky with one powerful push.

Now far overhead, it’s a small speck of red,
A ladybug crawling the sky’s big blue bed.
The hawks circle near it; the swallows swoop by,
And my kite and I share the whole afternoon sky.

When the sun sinks low and the breezes grow thin,
I wind up the string and I reel my kite in.
It rests in my arms with its flying all done,
But we’ll both be back here with tomorrow’s new sun.

1 Think about what happens when it rains on a parking lot. The water cannot soak into the hard blacktop, so it rushes across the surface and into a storm drain. Along the way, it picks up oil, litter, dirt, and lawn fertilizer. Many storm drains do not lead to a water treatment plant. Instead, they empty straight into nearby creeks and rivers. In Virginia, many of those creeks and rivers flow into the Chesapeake Bay.

2 This rushing rainwater is called runoff, and it causes real problems. The pollution it carries can harm fish, crabs, and the underwater plants they need. Fast-moving runoff can also wash away the soil along stream banks.

3 One solution is surprisingly simple: a rain garden. A rain garden is a shallow, bowl-shaped garden built in a low spot where rainwater collects, such as near the downspout from a roof. Instead of rushing away, the water pools in the garden and slowly soaks into the ground.

4 The plants in a rain garden are important. Gardeners usually choose native plants, which are plants that grow naturally in the area. Many native plants have long roots that help water sink deep into the soil. As the water moves down through the soil and roots, much of the pollution is trapped before it can reach a stream.

5 Some people worry that a rain garden will turn into a muddy pond full of mosquitoes. However, a well-built rain garden usually drains within a day or two. Mosquitoes need standing water for several days to grow from eggs into adults, so they do not have time to develop there.

6 Rain gardens also make neighborhoods more beautiful. Their flowers attract butterflies, bees, and birds. Several schools have planted rain gardens, and students help choose the plants and check how quickly the water drains after a storm. A rain garden is the best project any school could choose.

1 When Ms. Ortiz announced that I could take Nibbles, our class hamster, home for the weekend, I nearly jumped out of my seat. I had been waiting since September for my turn.

2 “Remember,” Ms. Ortiz said, handing me a checklist, “fresh water every morning, and always make sure the cage door is latched.”

3 At home, I set the cage on my desk and showed Nibbles to my little brother, Theo. Theo is five, and he wants to touch everything. “You can look, but don’t open the cage,” I warned him.

4 On Saturday morning, I filled Nibbles’s water bottle, just like the checklist said. Then I raced outside to play soccer with my friends.

5 When I came back, the cage door was hanging open. The cage was empty.

6 “THEO!” I shouted. “Did you open Nibbles’s cage?”

7 Theo’s lip trembled. “No! I didn’t touch it. I promise.”

8 I didn’t believe him. I searched under my bed, behind the bookshelf, and inside every shoe in my closet. No Nibbles. My heart pounded like a drum. What would I tell Ms. Ortiz? What would I tell the whole class?

9 That evening, Theo tugged on my sleeve. “Listen,” he whispered. We stood still in the hallway. From somewhere near the laundry basket came a tiny crunch, crunch, crunch.

10 Theo tiptoed over and lifted a pile of socks. There was Nibbles, happily nibbling a sunflower seed he must have carried from his dish.

11 I scooped him up and carried him back to his cage. That was when I noticed it. The latch wasn’t broken or bent. I had simply forgotten to close it after I filled the water bottle that morning.

12 My cheeks burned. I knelt down next to my brother. “Theo, I’m sorry I blamed you. You’re the one who found him.”

13 Theo grinned. “Can I help you check the latch tomorrow?”

14 “Deal,” I said. And every morning for the rest of the weekend, we checked it together — twice.

1 Every fall, millions of monarch butterflies in the eastern United States and Canada begin an amazing trip. They fly south, some as far as 3,000 miles, to reach a small group of mountain forests in central Mexico. Monarchs are the only butterflies known to make a round-trip journey like this, the way many birds do.

2 Monarchs cannot survive freezing winters, so they must find a warmer place to rest. In the mountains of Mexico, they cluster together on fir trees by the thousands. So many butterflies crowd onto a single branch that the branch can bend under their weight.

3 In spring, the monarchs fly north again. Along the way, females lay eggs on milkweed plants. Milkweed is the only plant that monarch caterpillars can eat. When the eggs hatch, the caterpillars feed on the leaves, grow, and then change into butterflies. It takes several generations of monarchs — children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren — to finish the trip north.

4 Scientists are worried because the number of monarchs has dropped in recent years. One reason is that much of the milkweed along the monarchs’ route has disappeared.

May 12 Today Dad and I planted six milkweed plants in the sunny corner of our backyard. The woman at the garden center said monarchs might find them. I’m not so sure. Our yard is small, and I have never seen a monarch here.

June 20 I found a tiny egg on the bottom of a milkweed leaf! It is creamy white and smaller than a sesame seed.

June 25 The egg hatched! The caterpillar has yellow, black, and white stripes, and it eats all day long. Some of the milkweed leaves already have holes in them.

July 9 The caterpillar is gone from the plant! Dad helped me search, and we found a pale green chrysalis hanging under the fence rail. It has tiny gold dots, as if someone decorated it with glitter.

July 20 This morning the chrysalis turned clear, and I could see orange wings folded inside. By lunchtime, a monarch had climbed out. It sat still for a while, drying its wings. Then it flapped once, twice, and floated over the fence.

July 21 I asked Dad if we can plant six more milkweed plants next spring, and he said yes! Maybe next year our backyard will be full of monarchs.