Virginia SOL-style Practice Test 1 — Reading (Grade 7)
A free Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) tests practice paper for Grade 7 in the format of the real test: 40 questions in 90 minutes, covering Section A — Passages 1–3; Section B — Passages 4–5; Section C — Paired Passages 6–7. 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 list went up on Monday, and by lunch I had read it eleven times, as if the names might rearrange themselves if I stared hard enough. Bridge Challenge Partners: Priya Raman and Colin Pratt.
(2) Colin Pratt sat in the back corner of Mr. Okafor's science room and said roughly four words a week. He turned in homework late, when he turned it in at all, and during labs he gazed out the window as though the parking lot were the most fascinating place in the county. I, on the other hand, had won the district science fair in sixth grade. The blue ribbon was still pinned to the corkboard above my desk, a little faded but proud.
(3) "Each pair will design and build a bridge from craft sticks and glue," Mr. Okafor explained. "In three weeks, we'll test them by hanging weights from the center. The bridge that holds the most weight wins." He smiled at the groan that rolled across the room. "Engineers don't get to choose their teammates either."
(4) That afternoon I sketched six designs in my notebook. When I showed them to Colin, he studied each page for a long time. Then he tapped the fourth one, a simple row of triangles, with one ink-stained finger.
(5) "This one," he said.
(6) "That's the plainest one," I said. "The arch is much more impressive."
(7) He shrugged, and I took the shrug as agreement. We would build the arch.
(8) For the next two weeks, I did most of the work. I cut the sticks, mixed the glue, and clamped the pieces together with binder clips. Colin came to our after-school sessions, but he spent most of the time watching the clock, and at exactly 4:15 he grabbed his backpack and left, sometimes in the middle of my sentences. Once, when I asked him to stay an extra half hour, he shook his head so fast that my face grew hot.
(9) "Fine," I said. "I'll finish it myself." I did not add the way I've done everything else, but I thought it loudly enough that he might have heard.
(10) On the Thursday before the test, I pressed gently on the center of our finished arch to admire it. There was a small, dry crack, like a knuckle popping. A joint near the top had split.
(11) I stared at the bridge. The test was the next morning.
(12) I was still staring when Colin came in late, pulling a small boy by the hand. The boy wore a dinosaur backpack nearly as big as he was.
(13) "Sorry," Colin said. "This is my brother, Danny. Every day I have to pick him up from the elementary school at four-thirty and watch him until Mom gets home from work. Today his school let out early, so he's stuck with me." He glanced at the bridge, and then he saw the crack. He did not say I told you so. He just settled Danny at the next table with a box of crayons, pulled his chair beside mine, and opened my notebook to the fourth page.
(14) "Triangles don't bend," he said quietly. "The force gets passed along the sides. My uncle builds sheds, and he says a triangle is the only shape you can't push out of shape without breaking one of its sides." He began sorting sticks into piles by length, and his hands moved with a speed I had never seen in class.
(15) We worked until the custodian flicked the lights to tell us it was time to go. Danny fell asleep on his backpack. Neither of us talked much, but it was not the heavy silence of the past two weeks. It was the kind of quiet that fills a room when two people are thinking about the same thing.
(16) The next morning, our triangle bridge held forty-one pounds before it gave way with a crack like a starter's pistol. It was the most in the class. Mr. Okafor wrote our names on the board with a star beside them, and for the first time all year, I saw Colin grin.
(17) That night, I took the blue ribbon down from my corkboard. In its place I pinned the page from my notebook with the row of triangles, and beside it I wrote, in small letters, Ask first.
Q1. Which sentence best describes Priya's attitude toward Colin at the beginning of the story?
Q2. In paragraph 7, what does the sentence "He shrugged, and I took the shrug as agreement" reveal about Priya?
Q3. In paragraph 9, Priya says she thought her unkind words "loudly enough that he might have heard." This most likely means that
Q4. Why did Colin leave the after-school sessions at exactly 4:15?
Q5. How does the author's choice to tell the story from Priya's point of view affect the reader's understanding of Colin?
Q6. In paragraph 15, the author contrasts "the heavy silence of the past two weeks" with "the kind of quiet that fills a room when two people are thinking about the same thing." What does this contrast show?
Q7. Which sentence best states a theme of the story?
(1) Today, if you want a glass of ice water, you open the freezer. But two hundred years ago, there were no electric freezers or refrigerators. Keeping food cold in summer was a serious problem, and ice was a luxury. Then, during the 1800s, a surprising business grew up across the northern United States: people began harvesting ice from frozen ponds and rivers the way farmers harvest wheat.
A Winter Crop
(2) In places with long, cold winters, lakes and ponds froze solid for weeks at a time. Ice harvesters waited until the ice was at least a foot thick, strong enough to hold the weight of workers, horses, and equipment. Harvest time usually came in January or February. For many farmers, who had little to do in their fields during winter, cutting ice was a welcome way to earn extra money.
Cutting the Ice
(3) The harvest followed a careful order. First, workers cleared the snow from the ice so that it could freeze thicker and cleaner. Next, a horse pulled an ice plow across the surface to cut deep grooves in a grid pattern. After the grid was marked, workers used long hand saws to cut all the way through, freeing blocks that often weighed more than two hundred pounds. Then they pushed the floating blocks through a channel of open water toward shore, using pike poles. Finally, the blocks were hauled up a ramp and into an icehouse.
Keeping Cold
(4) An icehouse was a building with thick walls and few, if any, windows. Workers stacked the blocks tightly and packed sawdust or straw between them and around the edges. Sawdust does not carry heat well, so it slowed the flow of warm air toward the ice. Some ice still melted, but a well-built icehouse could keep most of its supply frozen through the hottest months of summer.
(5) From the icehouse, the ice traveled to customers. In towns and cities, an iceman drove a wagon from street to street and carried blocks into homes with heavy iron tongs. Families kept the ice in an icebox, a wooden cabinet lined with metal. The ice sat in a compartment near the top, and because cold air sinks, it cooled the food stored below. Ice was also packed into railroad cars and ships and sent to warm places far to the south, where it sold for high prices.
The End of an Era
(6) Natural ice had problems, however. A warm winter could mean a thin, poor harvest, which made the supply unreliable. As towns and factories grew, many rivers became polluted, and people worried about germs in ice cut from dirty water. By the early 1900s, factories could manufacture clean ice with machines in any season. Then, in the decades that followed, electric refrigerators became common in American homes. One by one, the icehouses closed.
(7) Yet the ice harvest has not been completely forgotten. Some older Americans still call the refrigerator the "icebox," and a few towns hold winter festivals where visitors can try cutting a block of pond ice by hand.
Sidebar: Tools of the Trade
• Ice plow: a horse-drawn sled with a row of steel teeth that scored lines in the ice
• Pike pole: a long wooden pole with a metal hook and point, used to steer floating blocks
• Ice tongs: large pincers that gripped a block so that it could be lifted and carried
Q8. Which statement best expresses the central idea of the article?
Q9. How is the information in the section "Cutting the Ice" organized?
Q10. How does the sidebar "Tools of the Trade" help the reader?
Q11. In paragraph 6, the prefix un- and the suffix -able help the reader know that unreliable means
Q12. According to paragraph 4, why did workers pack sawdust around the ice blocks?
Q13. According to the article, which was one reason natural ice harvesting came to an end?
Q14. Which detail from the article best supports the idea that ice was valuable in the 1800s?
All summer the river took what we gave it:
paper boats with our names in pencil,
sticks we swore were racing,
the orange sandal my brother never found.
It took them without thanks, the way
a hurried clerk takes coins,
and hustled them around the bend
where the sycamores lean down to listen.
We thought the river was a thief.
We shouted after it from the rocks,
our voices small as crickets
against its long, brown argument with the stones.
But in September, when the water dropped,
I found what it had kept:
smooth stones in every color of a bruise,
worn round by all that rushing,
each one warm from a summer of sun.
Now one sits on my windowsill.
When the house is loud, I hold it,
proof that what is tumbled long enough
does not break, but softens,
and learns to fit a hand.
Q15. In stanza 2, the speaker says the river took things "the way / a hurried clerk takes coins." This comparison suggests that the river
Q16. In stanza 3, the phrase "its long, brown argument with the stones" most likely describes
Q17. How does the speaker's view of the river change between stanza 3 and stanza 4?
Q18. Which line from the poem best shows that the stone comforts the speaker?
Q19. Which sentence best expresses the theme of the poem?
An editorial from the Ridgeview Middle School student newspaper, written by a member of the student council
(1) Every school morning at 6:15, my alarm goes off, and every school morning I hit the snooze button at least twice. By the time the first bell rings at 7:25, I am sitting in my first-period class, but my brain is still somewhere under the blankets. I am not alone. Ridgeview Middle School should move its start time to 8:30 a.m. so that students can get the sleep they need.
(2) Sleep experts recommend that children ages 6 to 12 get nine to twelve hours of sleep each night and that teenagers ages 13 to 18 get eight to ten hours. Yet many middle school students fall far short. Last spring, the student council surveyed 340 Ridgeview students. Of those, 238 said they usually sleep fewer than eight hours on school nights.
(3) Staying up late is not simply a bad habit. Scientists have found that during the early teenage years, the body's internal clock begins to shift. The brain starts releasing melatonin, the chemical that makes people feel sleepy, later in the evening than it did in childhood. As a result, many teens do not feel tired until eleven o'clock or later, no matter how early they go to bed. Asking them to be alert at 7:25 in the morning is like asking a traveler who has just flown across the ocean to take a math test the moment the plane lands.
(4) Tired students are not at their best. When I am groggy, I read the same sentence three times and still cannot tell you what it said. Teachers notice it, too. "My first-period class is always the quietest," one Ridgeview science teacher told me. "It isn't because they're behaving. It's because they're half asleep."
(5) Some people argue that a later start would cause problems. Buses would need new schedules, and practices for sports and clubs would end later in the evening. These concerns are real, but they can be solved. Other school districts have changed their bus routes, and some teams could practice before school instead. Surely a little inconvenience for adults is worth a healthier, more alert student body.
(6) Our school board will vote on next year's schedule in March. I urge every student and parent to attend the meeting and speak up. An extra hour in the morning is not a luxury. It is the best homework help we could ask for.
Q20. What is the author's main claim?
Q21. Which sentence from the editorial is an opinion?
Q22. Which evidence does the author use to show that many Ridgeview students do not get enough sleep?
Q23. Read this dictionary entry.
shift
1. verb to move or change from one position or time to another
2. noun a period of time during which a group of people works
3. verb to change gears in a car or bicycle
4. noun a key on a keyboard used to type capital letters
Which definition of shift is used in paragraph 3?
Q24. Why does the author compare students to a traveler who has just flown across the ocean?
Q25. What is the main purpose of paragraph 5?
A scene from a play
CHARACTERS
MAYA, a seventh grader, the understudy for the lead role
THEO, a seventh grader, the student stage manager
MS. ABERNATHY, the drama teacher
SETTING: Backstage in a middle school auditorium, twenty minutes before opening night of the spring play. Racks of costumes line the wall. The muffled voices of the audience can be heard through the curtain.
[MAYA sits on a folding chair, clutching a script so tightly that the pages are wrinkled. THEO enters, wearing a headset and carrying a clipboard.]
THEO: There you are. I've been looking everywhere. [He checks his clipboard.] Ms. Abernathy says Harper's voice is completely gone. Laryngitis. She can't even whisper.
MAYA: [without looking up] I know. Harper texted me. Three sad faces and a picture of a throat lozenge.
THEO: So . . . you're on.
MAYA: [standing suddenly] Theo, I can't. Harper is Elena. Everyone bought tickets to see Harper play Elena. I'm just the person who waits backstage in case of an emergency.
THEO: This is the emergency.
MAYA: That's not helping.
THEO: [setting down his clipboard] Okay. Then answer one question. Who ran lines with Harper every single day at lunch for six weeks?
MAYA: [quietly] Me.
THEO: And who fixed the movements in Act Two when Harper kept walking into the lamp?
MAYA: That lamp was in a terrible spot.
THEO: You know this play inside and out. Better than anyone in the building, including me, and I wrote the cue sheet.
[MS. ABERNATHY enters, holding a long blue coat.]
MS. ABERNATHY: Maya. Good. Harper's coat should fit you if we roll up the sleeves. [She holds it out. MAYA does not take it.] Something wrong?
MAYA: What if I freeze? What if I open my mouth and nothing comes out?
MS. ABERNATHY: [gently lowering the coat] Then you take a breath, and you find the next line. That's what every actor does, even the ones with twenty years on the stage. Do you know why I choose my understudies so carefully?
MAYA: In case someone gets sick?
MS. ABERNATHY: Partly. But mostly because an understudy has to learn an entire part without ever being promised a chance to play it. That takes a special kind of dedication. [She holds out the coat again.] You didn't do all that work for nothing, Maya. Tonight you find out what it was for.
[A pause. MAYA sets the script on the chair, takes the coat, and slips it on. She rolls up one sleeve, then the other.]
THEO: [into his headset] Places in ten minutes, everyone. [To MAYA] Well?
MAYA: [taking a deep breath] Tell the lamp to stay out of my way.
[THEO grins. The lights dim.]
Q26. The stage directions at the beginning of the scene say that Maya is "clutching a script so tightly that the pages are wrinkled." This detail mainly shows that Maya is
Q27. Why does Theo ask Maya who ran lines with Harper and who fixed the movements in Act Two?
Q28. When Theo says, "You know this play inside and out," he means that Maya
Q29. Which statement best describes the main conflict in the scene?
Q30. What does Ms. Abernathy mean when she says, "Tonight you find out what it was for"?
Q31. What does Maya's final line, "Tell the lamp to stay out of my way," mainly show?
Passages 6 and 7 are both about oysters. Questions 32–34 are about Passage 6, Questions 35–37 are about Passage 7, and Questions 38–40 ask about both passages.
(1) An oyster does not look like much: a lumpy gray shell stuck to a rock or to other oysters. But beneath the surface of the Chesapeake Bay, oysters do an important job. They are filter feeders. As an oyster pumps water over its gills, it traps tiny particles such as algae and bits of mud to eat, and it releases cleaner water back into the bay. A single adult oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water in one day.
(2) Oysters also build. Young oysters, called spat, attach themselves to hard surfaces, especially the shells of other oysters. Over many years, layer upon layer of living and dead oysters forms a reef. These reefs give crabs, small fish, and other creatures places to hide and feed, much as coral reefs do in tropical oceans.
(3) Unfortunately, the bay's oyster population today is only a small fraction of what it was in the 1800s. Heavy harvesting removed millions of bushels of oysters, and the reefs were destroyed along with them. Diseases and pollution caused further losses. With fewer oysters filtering the water, the bay has become cloudier, and cloudy water blocks sunlight from reaching the underwater grasses that many young crabs and fish depend on.
(4) Scientists, government agencies, and volunteers are working to restore the bay's oysters. Workers return old shells to the water to give spat a place to attach, and they build new reefs in protected areas called sanctuaries, where harvesting is not allowed. Progress is slow, because an oyster needs two to three years to grow to full size. Still, researchers have found that many restored reefs are once again teeming with crabs, fish, and young oysters.
Q32. In paragraph 4 of Passage 6, the word teeming means
Q33. How is paragraph 3 of Passage 6 mainly organized?
Q34. According to Passage 6, why do workers return old shells to the water?
(1) When my grandfather told me we were going to raise oysters, I pictured a garden with oyster shells sprouting from the dirt like potatoes. Instead, he handed me a wire cage about the size of a laundry basket and pointed to the end of our dock.
(2) Our town's river association gives baby oysters to families who live on the water. In the fall, we picked up a bucket of old shells with tiny oysters stuck to them, some no bigger than my fingernail. We put them in the cage and lowered it into the river on a rope.
(3) Every two weeks, my grandfather and I pull the cage up and scrub it with a stiff brush. Mud and seaweed clog the wire, and if we don't clean it, the oysters can't get enough water. It is cold, messy work. The first time, I complained the whole way through. Then I noticed a tiny crab scuttling out from between the shells and a little fish darting away as the cage rose. Our cage had become somebody's home. After that, I stopped complaining and started counting the creatures I found.
(4) By the next summer, our oysters had grown to the size of my palm. We did not eat them. Instead, we returned them to the river association, and volunteers carried them out by boat to a sanctuary reef. My grandfather says that this spring, for the first time in years, he can see his toes when he wades off the end of the dock. I know that our one cage did not clean the whole river by itself. But I like to think our oysters helped.
Q35. How do the narrator's feelings about cleaning the oyster cage change in Passage 7?
Q36. Why does the narrator of Passage 7 describe first imagining oyster shells "sprouting from the dirt like potatoes"?
Q37. In Passage 7, what does the grandfather's comment that he can now see his toes when he wades off the dock suggest?
Q38. Which idea is supported by details in BOTH passages?
Q39. How is Passage 7 mainly different from Passage 6?
Q40. Which detail from Passage 7 is an example of the restoration work described in paragraph 4 of Passage 6?
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