Grade 5 ELA Practice Test: Reading Comprehension and Grammar
- Reading Comprehension and Grammar
- 12 questions
- 15 minutes
Questions 1-6 are about a short story told by a boy who makes a mistake, and questions 7-12 cover Grade 5 grammar, punctuation and word meanings. Tip: a theme is a lesson about life, so look at how the main character changes from the beginning of the story to the end.
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Question 1
Read the story and answer questions 1-6.
Passage A: The Tomato Promise
(1) When Mrs. Okafor left to visit her sister for a week, she handed me a silver key and a list written in neat blue ink. "Water the tomatoes every evening, Jonah," she said. "They're the pride of the whole street." I nodded like a soldier receiving orders. I was eleven, and nobody had ever trusted me with a key before.
(2) For four evenings, I followed the list exactly. I filled the green watering can, soaked the soil around every plant, and checked the leaves for the fat green caterpillars she called hornworms.
(3) Then came Friday. My cousin Dev arrived with a new video game, and the evening disappeared like water down a drain. On Saturday morning, I remembered with a jolt and raced next door. Friday had been the hottest day of the summer. The tomato plants were drooping, and their leaves hung limp and curled.
(4) I watered them twice, then sat on the back step with my stomach in knots. Maybe they would recover before Mrs. Okafor came home. Maybe she would never find out. Dev said I could just blame the heat wave, which was sort of true.
(5) By Monday, most of the plants had perked up. The two biggest ones, however, had dropped their yellow flowers. Without flowers, those plants would not grow any new tomatoes for weeks.
(6) When Mrs. Okafor's car pulled into her driveway, I walked over before I could change my mind. My voice wobbled, but I told her everything: the video game, the missed evening, the drooping leaves.
(7) She was quiet for a long moment. She walked to the garden, touched the bare stems, and sighed. Then she turned and pressed the silver key back into my hand. "Plants can grow new flowers," she said. "Trust is harder to grow back. You just showed me that I can count on you to tell the truth."
(8) I watered her garden every time she traveled that summer. In August, she brought over a bowl of ripe tomatoes, and she told me the reddest ones had come from the two plants that had nearly given up.
Which statement best expresses a theme of the story?
Correct answer: B
Jonah confesses even though he could have blamed the heat, and Mrs. Okafor says this shows she can count on him. The video game only causes the problem; the lesson of the story comes from what Jonah does afterward.
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Question 2
Passage A (see above):
Why does Jonah forget to water the plants on Friday?
Correct answer: A
Paragraph 3 says Dev arrived with a new video game and "the evening disappeared like water down a drain." Jonah never says he lost the key, and the story does not mention rain.
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Question 3
Passage A (see above):
In paragraph 6, Jonah walks over "before I could change my mind." What does this detail suggest?
Correct answer: B
Jonah knows that telling the truth will be hard, so he goes at once before his fear can stop him; his wobbling voice supports this. If he had decided to blame the heat, he would not tell her everything.
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Question 4
Passage A (see above):
In paragraph 3, what does the word limp mean?
Correct answer: D
The plants "were drooping" after a hot day without water, so limp leaves are soft and hang down. Limp can also describe how someone walks with a hurt leg, but leaves cannot walk.
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Question 5
Passage A (see above):
How does the story's first-person point of view affect what the reader learns?
Correct answer: C
Jonah tells the story, so the reader knows about his "stomach in knots" and his doubts, but learns how Mrs. Okafor feels only from what she does and says. Dev is a character in the story, not the narrator.
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Question 6
Passage A (see above):
Which sentence from the story best shows that Jonah felt guilty after he forgot to water the plants?
Correct answer: C
A "stomach in knots" describes the uneasy, guilty feeling Jonah has about his mistake. The sentence about following the list describes the days before he forgot.
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Question 7
Which verb correctly completes the sentence?
By the time the movie started, we ____ all of the popcorn.
Correct answer: A
The past perfect (had eaten) shows an action that was finished before another past action, the movie starting. Have eaten does not fit a sentence set in the past, and had ate uses the wrong form of the verb.
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Question 8
Which sentence uses correlative conjunctions correctly?
Correct answer: D
Correlative conjunctions work in pairs: either goes with or, neither goes with nor, and both goes with and. Each of the other sentences mixes up the pairs.
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Question 9
Which sentence is punctuated correctly?
Correct answer: A
A comma belongs after an introductory clause, here After the storm passed, to separate it from the main part of the sentence. A comma placed inside that clause or before to look breaks the sentence in the wrong place.
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Question 10
Which sentence shows the title of a short poem and the title of a book correctly?
Correct answer: B
Titles of short works such as poems and songs go in quotation marks, while titles of long works such as books are written in italics (or underlined by hand). Only one sentence treats both titles this way.
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Question 11
After his team lost the final game, Grandpa told Nico to keep his chin up.
What does the idiom keep his chin up mean?
Correct answer: D
To keep your chin up means to stay cheerful during a hard time, which fits a boy whose team just lost. The idiom is not really about posture, even though the words describe holding your head up.
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Question 12
The hikers were exhausted after climbing the steep mountain trail.
Which word is an antonym of exhausted?
Correct answer: C
An antonym has the opposite meaning. Exhausted means extremely tired, so energetic is its opposite, while weary, sleepy and worn-out all have meanings close to exhausted.
Questions you leave blank are not counted as wrong.
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