Virginia SOL-style Practice Test 1 — Reading (Grade 5)
A free Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) tests practice paper for Grade 5 in the format of the real test: 40 questions in 90 minutes, covering Section A — Passages 1 and 2; Section B — Passages 3 and 4; Section C — Passage 5 and Paired Passages 6A and 6B. Suggested time 90 minutes (the real test is untimed). Read each passage carefully, then choose the best answer to each question. You may look back at the passages. Answer every question. Attempt it online — every question is marked instantly and the correct answers are shown at the end.
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1 The bell above the door jingled as I pushed into Aunt Rosa's shop on the first morning of summer vacation. Clocks covered every wall—round ones, square ones, and one shaped like an owl whose eyes slid back and forth with each tick. The whole room ticked and tocked like a hundred tiny drummers who could not agree on a beat.
2 "Mateo! Right on time," Aunt Rosa said, peering at me over her half-moon glasses. "Which is fitting, for a clock shop."
3 Mom had arranged for me to help Aunt Rosa three mornings a week. I had pictured myself fixing clocks right away, but Aunt Rosa handed me a soft cloth and a jar of brass polish. "First, we clean," she said.
4 For two whole weeks, I polished clock faces, sorted screws into tiny drawers, and swept up dust. Meanwhile, Aunt Rosa sat at her workbench with a magnifying lens strapped to her forehead, moving so slowly that I sometimes wondered if she had fallen asleep.
5 One afternoon, while she was at the post office, I spotted a small silver pocket watch on her bench. Its back was open, and a hair-thin spring lay beside it. How hard could it be? I picked up the tweezers, grabbed the spring, and pushed it toward its spot. The spring shot out of the tweezers, bounced off the lamp, and vanished.
6 I searched the floor on my hands and knees until the bell jingled again. My face burned as I explained to Aunt Rosa what had happened.
7 Aunt Rosa did not scold me. Instead, she took a magnet from a drawer and swept it slowly across the floor, back and forth, row by row. After ten minutes, the magnet gave a faint click. There was the spring.
8 "Clocks are like people," she said, holding it up to the light. "Rush them, and they fight you. Be patient, and they tell you their secrets."
9 The next week, she let me help with the tall grandfather clock by the door. Its chime had gone silent. She showed me how to lift out each gear, lay it on a white cloth in order, and check it under the lens. It took us three mornings. I wanted to hurry, but every time I did, I remembered that spring bouncing off the lamp.
10 At last, we fitted the final gear into place. Aunt Rosa nodded at me, and I moved the minute hand to twelve. The clock seemed to take a breath, the gears whirred, and a deep, golden BONG rolled through the shop. Every other clock seemed to stop and listen.
11 "Well," said Aunt Rosa, smiling, "it seems the clock has decided to trust you."
Q1. Who is the narrator of this story?
Q2. Read this sentence from paragraph 1.
The whole room ticked and tocked like a hundred tiny drummers who could not agree on a beat.
What does this comparison suggest about the clocks?
Q3. Read these sentences from paragraph 2.
"Mateo! Right on time," Aunt Rosa said ... "Which is fitting, for a clock shop."
What does the word fitting mean in these sentences?
Q4. Based on paragraphs 3 through 5, why does Mateo try to fix the pocket watch while Aunt Rosa is away?
Q5. In paragraph 6, the words "My face burned" show that Mateo feels —
Q6. Which detail from the story best shows that Aunt Rosa is patient?
Q7. What does Aunt Rosa mean when she says, "Rush them, and they fight you. Be patient, and they tell you their secrets"?
Q8. Which sentence best states a theme of the story?
1 The Chesapeake Bay stretches about 200 miles from Maryland down through Virginia to the Atlantic Ocean. It is the largest estuary in the United States. An estuary is a body of water where fresh water from rivers mixes with salt water from the ocean. Hundreds of kinds of fish, birds, and plants live in and around the bay. Some of its hardest workers, however, are animals that never move at all once they are grown: oysters.
2 Nature's Water Filters
An oyster eats by pulling water into its shell and pumping it over its gills. The gills trap tiny plants called algae, along with bits of dirt. Then the oyster pumps the cleaner water back out. A single adult oyster can filter as much as 50 gallons of water in one day. When millions of oysters work together, they help keep the water clear enough for sunlight to reach the underwater grasses where crabs and young fish hide.
3 Oyster Reefs: Underwater Neighborhoods
Baby oysters drift through the water for two to three weeks. Then they must find something hard to cling to. Once a young oyster, called a spat, attaches, it stays in that spot for the rest of its life. Spat most often settle on old oyster shells. Over many years, layer upon layer of oysters grows into a reef. These rocky reefs give shelter to crabs, worms, and small fish.
4 A Population in Trouble
Long ago, oysters were so plentiful in the bay that some reefs rose almost to the surface, and boat captains had to steer around them. Since then, the number of oysters has dropped sharply. Several causes led to this change. For many years, people overharvested oysters, taking them out of the water faster than new ones could grow. Two oyster diseases spread through the bay and killed millions more. In addition, soil washed into the water from farms and building sites and buried reefs in mud, where spat could not attach. As a result, the bay today holds only a small part of the oysters it once did.
5 Bringing Oysters Back
Today, scientists, watermen, and volunteers are working to rebuild the bay's oyster population. Some families who live along the water practice "oyster gardening." They raise young oysters in wire cages that hang from their docks. After about a year, the oysters are moved to protected reefs where no one is allowed to harvest them. Some restaurants also save their empty oyster shells so that the shells can be returned to the bay.
6 Oysters may not look exciting, but they are the most amazing animals in the bay. Every oyster returned to the water is a small but important step toward a cleaner, healthier Chesapeake.
Q9. According to paragraph 1, what is an estuary?
Q10. Which sentence best states the main idea of the whole passage?
Q11. How is the information under the heading "A Population in Trouble" mainly organized?
Q12. The prefix over- in the word overharvested (paragraph 4) helps the reader know that people —
Q13. Based on the passage, why do some restaurants save their empty oyster shells for the bay?
Q14. Which sentence from the passage is an opinion?
Q15. What is the author's main purpose for writing this passage?
When all the town is tucked in bed
and streetlights hum a sleepy tune,
a yellow giant rumbles by
beneath a pale and frozen moon.
He clears his throat with grinding gears;
he shoulders drifts as tall as me;
he tosses snow in silver waves
like foam upon a wintry sea.
I press my nose against the glass
and watch his orange lantern spin.
It splashes light across my walls,
then slips into the dark again.
By dawn the roads lie black and bare;
the school bus grumbles down the lane.
And no one knows the giant passed—
no one but me, behind the pane.
Q16. In stanza 1, why does the poet call the snowplow "a yellow giant"?
Q17. Which line from the poem contains a simile?
Q18. Read the dictionary entry.
drift (noun)
1. a slow movement carried along by water or air
2. a pile of snow or sand heaped up by the wind
3. the general meaning of what someone is saying
4. a gradual change in direction
Which meaning of drifts is used in stanza 2 ("he shoulders drifts as tall as me")?
Q19. Which words best describe how the speaker feels about the snowplow?
Q20. How is the last stanza different from the first three stanzas?
Have you ever wondered exactly how much rain fell during a storm? Meteorologists, the scientists who study weather, use a tool called a rain gauge to find out. You can build a simple rain gauge at home and keep your own weather record.
What You Need
• a clear plastic bottle with straight sides (a 2-liter bottle works well)
• scissors (ask an adult for help)
• a handful of small pebbles
• water
• a ruler
• waterproof tape
• a notebook and a pencil
What to Do
1. Ask an adult to cut the top off the bottle about one-third of the way down.
2. Place the pebbles in the bottom of the bottle. They weigh the bottle down so that wind cannot tip it over.
3. Pour in just enough water to cover the pebbles. Mark the water's surface with a piece of tape. This line is your "zero" line.
4. Tape the ruler to the outside of the bottle so that its zero mark lines up with the tape line.
5. Turn the cut-off top upside down and set it into the bottle like a funnel. The funnel catches rain and helps keep leaves out.
6. Place your gauge on flat ground in an open area, away from trees and buildings. Trees and roofs can block rain or drip extra water into the gauge, which would make your measurements wrong.
Reading Your Gauge
Check your gauge at the same time every day. Read the ruler at the water's surface. After you record the date and the amount in your notebook, pour water out until it is back down to the zero line. Then your gauge is ready for the next day.
Tip: On hot, sunny days, some of the water in your gauge evaporates, or turns into vapor and rises into the air. Check your gauge soon after a storm ends to get the most accurate reading.
Q21. In the first paragraph, the suffix -ist in meteorologist means —
Q22. Why does the author tell readers to put pebbles in the bottom of the bottle?
Q23. Which step must be completed right before the ruler is taped to the bottle?
Q24. According to step 6, why should the rain gauge be placed away from trees and buildings?
Q25. Read this sentence from "Reading Your Gauge."
After you record the date and the amount in your notebook, pour water out until it is back down to the zero line.
What does record mean in this sentence?
Q26. In the tip, which words help the reader understand the meaning of evaporates?
Q27. Why does the author use numbers for the steps under "What to Do"?
1 When Ms. Alvarez announced that the fifth graders would build bridges out of craft sticks, Nora grinned. Then Ms. Alvarez read the partner list, and Nora's grin faded. She had been paired with Eli Brandt, the new boy who hardly said a word and spent recess drawing in a spiral notebook.
2 "He won't be any help," Nora whispered to her friend Jada. "I'll end up doing the whole thing myself."
3 The contest rules were simple. Each team had one week and 200 craft sticks to build a bridge that stretched across a 12-inch gap. On Friday, Ms. Alvarez would stack weights on each bridge until it collapsed. The bridge that held the most weight would win.
4 On Monday, Nora started gluing sticks into a long, flat road made of squares. Eli watched quietly. On Tuesday, he slid his spiral notebook across the table. Inside were pages of careful sketches—bridges with triangles zigzagging along their sides.
5 "Triangles are the strongest shape," Eli said softly. "When you push on a square, it squishes into a diamond. A triangle keeps its shape. That's why real bridges use them."
6 Nora frowned. She did not like changing her plans. But she pressed gently on one of her glued squares, and it leaned sideways like a tired fence. She sighed. "Show me," she said.
7 For the rest of the week, they worked side by side. Eli measured and cut, and Nora, whose hands were steadier, glued the tiny joints. By Thursday, their bridge looked like a row of mountain peaks linked together.
8 On Friday, the class crowded around the testing table. One bridge snapped at four pounds. Another sagged and cracked at seven. When it was Nora and Eli's turn, Ms. Alvarez added weight after weight—ten pounds, fifteen, twenty. At twenty-two pounds, the bridge finally gave a loud crack and folded. The class cheered. Nora and Eli had won.
9 Later, as they cleaned up, Nora noticed a new sketch in Eli's notebook: two stick figures standing together on a bridge. One was labeled E, and the other was labeled N.
10 "Next time," Nora said, "you pick the design first."
Q28. In paragraph 2, how does Nora feel about working with Eli?
Q29. In paragraph 3, what does the word collapsed mean?
Q30. Read this sentence from paragraph 6.
But she pressed gently on one of her glued squares, and it leaned sideways like a tired fence.
What does this comparison show?
Q31. What causes Nora to agree to try Eli's design?
Q32. What does the sketch described in paragraph 9 suggest about Eli?
Q33. Which sentence best states a theme of the story?
1 Every fall, millions of monarch butterflies in the eastern United States and Canada begin an amazing journey. They fly south, some as far as 3,000 miles, to spend the winter in the mountain forests of central Mexico. None of these butterflies has ever made the trip before, yet somehow each one finds its way.
2 How do they do it? Scientists believe that monarchs use the position of the sun to guide them, almost like a built-in compass. Cooler temperatures and shorter days signal that it is time to leave.
3 The monarchs that make this trip are special. Most adult monarchs live only two to six weeks. The fall travelers, however, can live as long as eight months. They spend the winter resting in huge clusters on fir trees. In the spring, they begin flying north and lay eggs along the way. Their children and grandchildren finish the trip back home.
4 Monarchs face many dangers. Their caterpillars can eat only one kind of plant: milkweed. When fields are cleared or sprayed with weed killer, the milkweed disappears, and so do the monarchs. Storms, droughts, and very cold weather also take a toll.
5 People can help. Many families and schools now plant milkweed in their yards and gardens. Even a small patch can become a welcome rest stop for these long-distance travelers.
Q34. According to Passage 6A, how are the monarchs that fly south in the fall different from most other monarchs?
Q35. In paragraph 4 of Passage 6A, what does the phrase "take a toll" mean?
1 September 14
Today my dad and I helped tag monarch butterflies at the Willow Creek Nature Center. Before today, I had no idea you could put a sticker on a butterfly!
2 Ranger Okafor showed us what to do. First, she swung her net in one smooth sweep over a patch of goldenrod and caught a monarch without hurting it. Next, she reached into the net and gently held the butterfly by its folded wings. Then she pressed a tiny round tag, smaller than a pencil eraser, onto a spot on its back wing where it would not get in the way of flying. Every tag has its own code of letters and numbers. After that, we wrote the code, the date, and whether the butterfly was male or female on a data sheet. Last, she opened her fingers and let it go.
3 At 10:15, I tagged my very own monarch. His code was TXK 402. When I let go, he floated up, circled once over the milkweed, and headed south toward Mexico as if he already knew the way.
4 Ranger Okafor explained that if someone finds a tagged monarch in Mexico this winter, that person can report its code. By matching each code to the place where the butterfly was tagged, scientists learn which routes monarchs take and how far they travel. She said that only a few tags are ever found because the butterflies spread out over such a huge area.
5 I know the chances are small, but I really hope someone finds TXK 402. I am going to check the list of reported tags every week this winter!
Q36. According to paragraph 2 of Passage 6B, what happens right after Ranger Okafor presses the tag onto the butterfly's wing?
Q37. According to Passage 6B, why are only a few tags ever found?
Q38. Use both Passage 6A and Passage 6B to answer questions 38–40.
Which idea is found in both passages?
Q39. Which question can be answered using Passage 6B but not Passage 6A?
Q40. How is Passage 6B different from Passage 6A?
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