Virginia SOL-style Practice Test 1 — Reading (Grade 6)
A free Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) tests practice paper for Grade 6 in the format of the real test: 40 questions in 90 minutes, covering Part 1 — Literary texts: story, poem and play; Part 2 — Informational texts; Part 3 — Paired passages. 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 as often as you like. 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 rules for the sixth-grade Engineering Challenge fit on a single index card. Build a bridge from craft sticks and white glue. Make it long enough to cross the twelve-inch gap between two desks. Then, on Friday, Mr. Delgado would hang a bucket from the middle and add sand, one scoop at a time, until something snapped.
(2) Priya had read the card so often that its corners had gone soft. She had also filled half a notebook with drawings: arches, towers, even a suspension bridge with thread for cables. Her favorite was a tall arch that curved up like a rainbow. It was, she thought, the most beautiful thing she had ever designed.
(3) Her partner, Marcus, looked at the drawing for a long time. “It's pretty,” he said finally. “But I think it'll fold in the middle. What if we used triangles along the sides? My uncle builds barns, and he says a triangle is the only shape that won't change shape when you push on it.”
(4) “Triangles are boring,” Priya said. “Every team will do triangles.”
(5) Marcus shrugged and didn't argue. Priya took that as a yes.
(6) For the next four days they built the arch. Priya bent the sticks by soaking them in warm water overnight, and Marcus held each joint steady while the glue dried. He hummed while he worked, which usually annoyed Priya, but this time she hardly noticed. The arch rose higher every afternoon, smooth and graceful, and other students drifted over to admire it.
(7) On Friday the classroom buzzed like a beehive. Team after team set their bridges across the gap. Mr. Delgado hooked on the bucket and began to pour. One bridge cracked after three scoops. Another sagged slowly, like a tired horse, and then gave way after eight. A bridge made entirely of triangles held eleven scoops before a single joint popped.
(8) Then it was Priya's turn. Her hands were cold as she lowered the arch into place. The first scoop went in. The second. On the fourth, she heard a small, dry tick, like a fingernail tapping a window. On the fifth, the top of the arch flattened, and the whole bridge folded neatly in half, exactly the way Marcus had said it would.
(9) Nobody laughed, but Priya's face burned anyway. She stared at the pieces and waited for Marcus to say I told you so.
(10) He didn't. Instead, he picked up one broken half and turned it over in his hands. “Look,” he said. “It broke at the top, where there was nothing holding the curve in shape. If we'd put triangles under the arch, like braces—”
(11) “It would have been an arch and triangles,” Priya said slowly. She took the other half from him and held the two pieces together. For the first time all week, she saw the bridge the way Marcus saw it: not as a picture, but as a set of pushes and pulls.
(12) Mr. Delgado wrote their score on the board: 4 scoops. Underneath, he added, Next challenge: two weeks from today.
(13) Priya opened her notebook to a clean page and slid it across the desk. “Show me the barn thing,” she said. “The triangles. Show me how your uncle does it.”
(14) Marcus grinned and picked up a pencil.
Q1. In paragraph 2, the detail that the card's “corners had gone soft” suggests that Priya —
Q2. Read this sentence from paragraph 5.
Marcus shrugged and didn't argue. Priya took that as a yes.
What does this show about Priya?
Q3. In paragraph 7, the author writes that “the classroom buzzed like a beehive.” This simile helps the reader understand that the classroom was —
Q4. In paragraph 7, what does the phrase “gave way” mean?
Q5. Which detail from early in the story best hints at how Priya's bridge will fail?
Q6. From which point of view is the story told?
Q7. How does Priya change from the beginning of the story to the end?
Q8. Which statement best expresses a theme of the story?
All summer long the creek was loud,
a chatterbox of stones;
it gossiped to the cattails
in a hundred splashing tones.
It raced the leaves, it tickled toes,
it never once was still;
it sang its way through Miller's field
and tumbled down the hill.
But now December's hand has come
and laid a lid of glass;
the creek lies hushed beneath the ice
and lets the winter pass.
I kneel and put my ear to it
and listen once, then twice—
and there it is, a trickle
running underneath the ice.
It hasn't stopped; it's only resting,
humming soft and low,
saving up its summer songs
for when it's time to go.
So when the world seems frozen shut
and all the noise has fled,
I think about the little creek
still running in its bed.
Q9. In stanza 1, the poet describes the creek as “a chatterbox” that “gossiped to the cattails.” This personification shows that in summer the creek was —
Q10. In stanza 3, what is the “lid of glass”?
Q11. What does the speaker discover in stanzas 4 and 5?
Q12. Read the last line of the poem.
still running in its bed.
In this line, the word bed means —
Q13. Which statement best expresses the theme of the poem?
CHARACTERS: NORA, age 12; JONAH, her brother, age 9; GRANDMA RUTH
SETTING: A small kitchen on a Saturday morning. Flour dusts the counter, and a large mixing bowl sits beside a row of jars. NORA holds an old index card up to the window light.
NORA: (squinting) “Two cups of … something.” It could be flour. It could be sugar. The ink ran right through it.
JONAH: (peering into the bowl) Does it matter? They're both white.
NORA: It matters a lot, Jonah. One makes bread. The other makes a disaster. Grandma's party is at four o'clock, and she's made this bread every Sunday for fifty years. It has to be perfect.
JONAH: (holding up a jar) This one says “salt.” Is that the same as sugar?
NORA: (grabbing the jar) No! Put that back. (She sets it on the highest shelf.) Just—hand me things when I ask for them, okay?
JONAH: (sitting on a stool, arms crossed) You said I could help.
NORA: (sighing) You are helping. You're … supervising.
(A knock at the door. GRANDMA RUTH enters, carrying a basket. NORA quickly hides the card behind her back.)
GRANDMA RUTH: I smelled flour from the driveway. Somebody's baking.
JONAH: It's a surprise. Nora's making your bread, but the card is all smudgy, so she doesn't know what the two cups are.
NORA: (under her breath) Thanks, Jonah.
GRANDMA RUTH: (laughing) Let me see that. (She studies the card, then hands it back.) Oh, sweetheart, I haven't looked at this card in thirty years. I stopped following it the day I burned my first loaf.
NORA: But—then how do you know what goes in?
GRANDMA RUTH: I don't, exactly. A little more flour when it's rainy. A little less when it's dry. And my brother always added a handful of raisins when I wasn't looking. (She winks at JONAH.) The recipe isn't on the card, Nora. It's in the kneading.
(She rolls up her sleeves and pushes the bowl toward both children.)
GRANDMA RUTH: Four hands are better than two. Jonah, you're in charge of raisins.
JONAH: (jumping down from the stool) Finally!
(Lights fade as the three of them lean over the bowl together.)
Q14. Why does Nora hide the card behind her back when Grandma Ruth enters?
Q15. When Nora tells Jonah that he is “supervising,” she is most likely —
Q16. Nora says “Thanks, Jonah” under her breath because she is —
Q17. What does Grandma Ruth mean when she says, “The recipe isn't on the card, Nora. It's in the kneading”?
Q18. Which part of the play tells the reader what the kitchen looks like at the start of the scene?
Q19. How is Nora's problem finally solved?
(1) Imagine a creature with no eyes, no arms, and no legs. It spends its entire adult life glued to one spot. Yet this small animal may be one of the hardest workers in the Chesapeake Bay. It is the eastern oyster.
How an Oyster Eats
(2) An oyster is a filter feeder. It pulls water in over its gills, traps tiny bits of food such as algae, and pushes the cleaner water back out. A single adult oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water in one day. As it feeds, the oyster also removes some sediment, the fine dirt that makes water cloudy.
Why Clear Water Matters
(3) Clear water is important for the whole bay. When water is cloudy, sunlight cannot reach the underwater grasses that grow on the bottom. Without sunlight, these grasses die. That is a problem because the grasses give shelter to young crabs and fish. In this way, the health of a tiny oyster is connected to the health of many other animals.
A City of Shells
(4) Oysters do not live alone. Young oysters, called spat, attach themselves to hard surfaces, and their favorite surface is the shell of another oyster. Over many years, layer upon layer of shells builds up into a reef. An oyster reef is like an underwater apartment building. Small fish, worms, and crabs hide in its nooks and crannies, and larger fish come there to hunt.
A Population in Trouble
(5) Scientists estimate that the bay holds only a small fraction of the oysters it held two hundred years ago. There are several reasons. For many years, people took far more oysters than could grow back. This overharvesting, along with pollution and two oyster diseases, killed millions of oysters. As reefs were scraped away, young oysters had fewer places to attach, so even fewer grew up.
Bringing the Oysters Back
(6) Today, many groups are working to restore oyster reefs. Some collect used shells from restaurants and return them to the water so that spat have somewhere to settle. Some students raise baby oysters in cages hanging from docks, then release them onto protected reefs. Many people agree that restoring oysters is the most exciting project in the bay today. Each healthy oyster is one more small filter helping to clean the water.
Did You Know?
Many oysters begin life as males and later become females.
Glossary
algae — tiny plantlike living things that grow in water
gills — body parts that some water animals use to breathe and, in oysters, to catch food
restore — to bring something back to an earlier, healthy condition
Q20. Under which heading would a reader find out how oysters help underwater grasses?
Q21. In paragraph 4, the author compares an oyster reef to “an underwater apartment building” to show that a reef —
Q22. In paragraph 5, the prefix over- in the word overharvesting means —
Q23. How are paragraphs 5 and 6 organized when they are read together?
Q24. Based on paragraphs 4–6, why does returning used shells to the water help oysters?
Q25. Which sentence from paragraph 6 is an opinion?
Q26. The author most likely included the “Did You Know?” box in order to —
Q27. Which statement best expresses the main idea of the article?
(1) Step outside in almost any town after dark, and you will probably see streetlights glowing along the road. It is easy to take them for granted. For most of human history, however, city streets at night were almost completely black.
(2) Long ago, people who went out after sunset carried their own light: a torch, a candle, or a small oil lamp. Some cities paid watchmen to walk the streets at night, but the darkness still made travel slow and sometimes dangerous. In the 1400s and 1500s, a few European cities passed laws requiring households to hang a lantern outside the front door on winter evenings. These lanterns were dim and often blew out, but they were a start.
(3) A major change came in the early 1800s, when cities began piping gas through underground pipes to lamps on tall posts. Gas light was much brighter than candlelight, and it could burn all night. Each evening at dusk, a worker called a lamplighter walked from post to post with a long pole, opening a valve and lighting each lamp. At dawn, the lamplighter made the same trip to turn them off.
(4) Later in the 1800s, electric streetlights appeared. At first, many people were amazed—and a little suspicious. Electric lights were so bright that some visitors claimed they could read a newspaper in the middle of the street at midnight. Unlike gas lamps, electric lights could be switched on and off from one central place. Over the next several decades, as more cities switched to electricity, the job of the lamplighter slowly disappeared.
(5) Streetlights changed how people lived. Shops could stay open later. Families could walk to evening concerts or visit neighbors after supper. Many people felt safer walking home. The night, which had once belonged to owls and watchmen, now belonged to everyone.
(6) Today, streetlights are changing again. Many cities are replacing older bulbs with LED lights, which use far less electricity. Some towns are also rethinking how much light they really need. Scientists have learned that too much artificial light at night can confuse migrating birds and lead newly hatched sea turtles away from the ocean. As a result, some communities now use lights that shine only downward or dim late at night. After centuries of trying to banish the dark, people are learning that a little darkness is worth keeping.
Q28. How does the author organize most of this article?
Q29. In the word lamplighter (paragraph 3), the suffix -er means —
Q30. According to paragraph 4, why did the job of the lamplighter disappear?
Q31. In paragraph 5, what does the author mean by saying that the night “now belonged to everyone”?
Q32. What is the author's main purpose in paragraph 6?
Q33. Read this sentence from paragraph 6.
After centuries of trying to banish the dark, people are learning that a little darkness is worth keeping.
What does the word banish mean?
Passage A and Passage B are two opinion articles about the same question: should middle school start later in the morning?
(1) Every school morning, my alarm goes off at 5:45. By the time my bus arrives at 6:50, I have been awake for over an hour, but my brain feels as if it is still in bed. I am not alone. Across the country, many middle school students start class before they are truly awake. Our school day should begin later—at 8:30 instead of 7:25.
(2) The problem is not that students are lazy. During the preteen and teenage years, the body's internal clock shifts. Many young people simply do not feel sleepy until 10:30 or 11:00 at night, no matter how early they climb into bed. Sleep experts recommend that children ages 6 to 12 get nine to twelve hours of sleep each night. A student who falls asleep at 10:30 and wakes at 5:45 gets only about seven hours.
(3) Missing sleep night after night can lead to chronic tiredness, and tired students have a harder time paying attention, remembering what they learn, and controlling their moods. Last month, I surveyed the 26 students in my homeroom. Nineteen of them said they felt sleepy during their first class at least three days a week.
(4) A later start would not add a single minute to the school day. It would simply move the day to a time when students' brains are ready to learn. If we want students to do their best, we should let them wake up first.
(1) No one argues that sleep is unimportant. Students who are well rested learn better, and everyone deserves a good night's sleep. But pushing the start of the middle school day later would create new problems that are easy to overlook.
(2) Consider the buses. In many districts, the same buses carry high school, middle school, and elementary students on a staggered schedule. One group is dropped off, and the buses loop back for the next. If middle school started an hour later, the district would need to buy more buses and hire more drivers, or else change the times of the other schools as well.
(3) A later start also means a later finish. Sports teams would practice until dark in the fall and winter, and games against schools with earlier schedules would be hard to arrange. Some students watch younger brothers and sisters after school, and their families count on them being home by mid-afternoon.
(4) There is a simpler way to help tired students. Families can set a regular bedtime, and students can put phones and tablets away an hour before sleep, since the light from screens can make it harder to fall asleep. These changes cost nothing, and they do not turn an entire community's schedule upside down.
Q34. Which sentence from Passage A best supports the author's claim that many students are not rested enough for early classes?
Q35. In paragraph 3 of Passage A, the word chronic comes from the Greek root chron. What does chron mean?
Q36. Read this dictionary entry.
stagger verb
1. to walk or move unsteadily, almost falling
2. to shock or amaze someone
3. to arrange events so they do not all happen at the same time
4. to hesitate or waver
Which meaning of stagger is used in paragraph 2 of Passage B, “on a staggered schedule”?
Q37. Why does the author of Passage B begin with “No one argues that sleep is unimportant”?
Q38. On which point do the authors of both passages agree?
Q39. How does the author of Passage B respond to the problem described in Passage A?
Q40. Which statement best describes a difference between the two passages?
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