Version C — Grade 3 ELA Practice Test

When Zara was eight, her family moved to a new city. The apartment was fine. The school was fine. But everything felt exactly that: fine. One afternoon, her father took a wrong turn coming home from the grocery store. Instead of groaning, like Zara expected, he said, "Let's see where this goes." They ended up on a street Zara had never seen, lined with little shops. Her father stopped in front of a bakery. In the window was a pyramid of orange pastries dusted in powdered sugar. "Wait here," her father said. He went in and came out with a small paper bag. They ate the pastries on a bench. They tasted like honey and cardamom—like something Zara's grandmother used to make. "This tastes like home," Zara said, surprised. "That's because it is," her father said. "Home is just the places where you find the familiar." Zara did not entirely understand what he meant. But on the way back, she looked at the street signs and memorized the route so she could find the bakery again.

Water is always moving. Rain falls, rivers flow, and ocean water evaporates into the air. All of these movements are part of a continuous process called the water cycle. The water cycle has four main stages. In evaporation, heat from the sun turns liquid water from oceans, lakes, and rivers into water vapor—a gas that rises into the air. In condensation, water vapor cools as it rises higher in the atmosphere. It turns back into tiny water droplets that form clouds. When enough water droplets collect in a cloud, precipitation occurs. The droplets combine and fall back to Earth as rain, snow, sleet, or hail, depending on the temperature. Finally, in collection, water gathers in oceans, lakes, rivers, and underground. From there, the cycle begins again. The water cycle is not just about moving water from place to place. It also plays a key role in distributing heat around the planet. When water evaporates, it absorbs heat from the surface, cooling the area below. When it condenses into clouds, it releases that heat into the atmosphere. One of the most important things about the water cycle is that it recycles water. The same water molecules that fell as rain on ancient dinosaurs have evaporated, condensed, and fallen again thousands of times. Water is never created or destroyed—it is just moved around.

On the morning of the city chess tournament, Felix did not want to get out of bed. He had practiced for four months. He knew the openings and the endgames and how to protect his king with a castle. He had beaten his coach twice in practice and lost to her fourteen times. He had earned his spot at the tournament. He still did not want to get out of bed. "Nervous?" his older sister Amara asked, leaning in the doorway. "No," Felix said. Then: "Yes." "That means it matters to you," Amara said. "If you didn't care, you wouldn't be nervous." Felix thought about that. He got up and got dressed. At the tournament, he lost his first game in thirty moves. He won his second game in forty-two. He drew his third, which meant neither player won. When he got home, he did not feel like he thought he would—either triumphant or crushed. He mostly felt tired and also like he wanted to play chess again tomorrow. "How was it?" Amara asked. "It counted," Felix said. And that felt like the right answer.

Bats are the only mammals that can truly fly. While some mammals, like flying squirrels, can glide, bats have wings made of thin skin stretched between long finger bones, giving them the ability to flap and maneuver like birds. Most bats are active at night. To navigate in the dark, they use a system called echolocation. A bat sends out a high-pitched sound that bounces off nearby objects and returns as an echo. By analyzing the echo, the bat can determine the size, shape, and distance of an object—even a small flying insect. Echolocation is so precise that bats can fly through a room strung with thin wires without touching them. Bats eat a wide variety of foods. Many species eat insects—a single little brown bat can eat up to 1,000 mosquitoes in one hour. Some bats eat fruit and play an important role in spreading seeds. Others drink nectar from flowers and help pollinate plants, similar to bees. A few species, called vampire bats, feed on the blood of large animals, but these are rare and live only in parts of Central and South America. Bats are often misunderstood. They are not aggressive and rarely carry diseases that affect people. In fact, bats provide enormous benefits to ecosystems and agriculture by controlling insect populations and pollinating plants. Without bats, many ecosystems would be significantly less healthy, and farms would face far larger insect problems.

For as long as Amara could remember, Mrs. Nguyen next door had a key to their apartment. "In case of emergency," her mother always said. Amara had never thought much about it until the afternoon her mother got stuck in traffic and Amara forgot her key inside. She sat on the hallway steps for twenty minutes before she remembered. She knocked on Mrs. Nguyen's door. The old woman opened it in her apron, flour on her hands. "I don't have my key," Amara explained. "Come in," Mrs. Nguyen said. She poured Amara a glass of water and went to find the spare key from a hook near the door. While she was looking, the smell of something baking filled the apartment. "What is that?" Amara asked. "Bánh mì bread. I'll send a loaf home with you." When Amara's mother finally arrived—flustered and apologizing—Amara was sitting at Mrs. Nguyen's kitchen table eating bread and learning three words in Vietnamese. "I see you've been taken care of," her mother said, surprised. "I always knew you would be," Mrs. Nguyen said, and smiled.

Camouflage is one of nature's most effective survival tools. Animals that blend into their surroundings are harder for predators to spot—and harder for prey to see coming. The ability to hide in plain sight has evolved in creatures as different as insects and polar bears. Some animals use color to match their environment. Arctic animals like the snowshoe hare and the Arctic fox change their coat color with the seasons. In winter, their fur turns white to blend with snow. In summer, it turns brown or gray to match the tundra. This seasonal change gives them protection year-round. Other animals use patterns rather than solid colors. The spots of a leopard and the stripes of a tiger both break up the outline of the animal's body, making it harder to see in dappled light or dense vegetation. This is called disruptive coloration. The most impressive camouflage artists are cephalopods—octopuses, squids, and cuttlefish. These animals have special skin cells called chromatophores that can change color and texture in less than a second. A cuttlefish can mimic the texture of sand, rock, or coral almost perfectly. Some species can even produce moving patterns on their skin to confuse predators. Camouflage has inspired human technology too. Military uniforms, vehicles, and equipment use disruptive color patterns based on the same principles as animal camouflage. Scientists studying cephalopod skin are also developing flexible electronic displays that could someday mimic their abilities.