STAAR Grade 6 RLA — Practice Test 1

Reading Passage 1: "The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter"

Read the passage. Then answer the questions that follow.

The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter

The storm had been building since dawn. By late afternoon, Iris stood at the kitchen window of the lighthouse and watched the gulls scatter inland. Her father, who had kept the light at Penlee Point for nineteen years, was already climbing the spiral stairs to check the lamp. Iris was thirteen, old enough to help, and she did not need to be told twice.

"Bring up the spare wicks," her father called from the stairwell. His voice echoed against the curved stone walls. Iris grabbed the tin from the supply shelf and started up. Each step felt colder than the last.

At the top, the lamp room was a circle of glass and brass and roaring wind. Rain hammered the panes so hard it sounded like nails. Her father was crouched beside the lamp, frowning at the burner.

"The flame keeps guttering," he said. "Salt in the oil, maybe. Or the wick's gone bad."

Iris handed him the tin. She had been up here a hundred times in fair weather, but tonight the lamp room felt smaller, more fragile, as though the storm could pluck it off the rocks. She forced herself not to look out the seaward windows.

Her father changed the wick with steady hands. "There," he said. "That should hold." The flame leapt up, bright and clean, and the great lens spun its slow, patient circle. Light slid across the black water and vanished into the rain.

That was when Iris saw it — just for a moment, between the swells — a tiny smudge of red, rising and falling. A ship's lantern, she was almost certain.

"Father." Her voice came out small. She pointed.

He squinted. The smudge appeared again, closer to the rocks now. He swore quietly under his breath, the first time Iris had ever heard him do it.

"They've drifted off course," he said. "The reef. They don't know about the reef."

Iris understood at once. The lamp could warn them, but only if they were watching for it. They needed something more.

"The bell," she said.

The fog bell hung in a small tower outside, reachable only by a slick walkway. Her father looked at her, then at the door, then at the smudge of red light. He was not a young man.

"I'll go," Iris said before she could think herself out of it. She did not feel brave. She felt like someone borrowing bravery from someone older. But she pulled her oilskin off the hook and stepped into the wind before her father could argue.

The walkway was a black ribbon under her boots. She rang the bell. She rang it again, and again, until her arms burned and the wind tore the sound out across the water. She did not know if anyone could hear it. She only knew that she was ringing it, and that her father was watching the lamp, and that somewhere out in the dark a ship had a chance now that it had not had ten minutes ago.

In the morning the storm was gone. A schooner was anchored in the bay, mast splintered but hull whole. Its captain came up the path to thank them, hat in hand. He looked at Iris a long time before he spoke.

"It was the bell," he said. "We heard the bell."

1. Which sentence BEST states a theme of the passage?

2. From whose point of view is this story told?

3. In paragraph 5, the lamp room is described as feeling "smaller, more fragile, as though the storm could pluck it off the rocks." This figurative language is an example of —

4. What is the central conflict of the passage?

5. The narrator says Iris "felt like someone borrowing bravery from someone older." This sentence MOST suggests that Iris —

6. Why does the author MOST LIKELY mention that Iris's father swore "the first time Iris had ever heard him do it"?

7. In paragraph 4, the word guttering MOST NEARLY means —

Reading Passage 2: "How Volcanoes Build Islands"

Read the informational passage. Then answer the questions that follow.

How Volcanoes Build Islands

If you fly over the Pacific Ocean and look down, you may notice long curving lines of islands rising out of an otherwise empty blue. The Hawaiian Islands form one such chain. The Aleutian Islands of Alaska form another. These chains were not pushed up by some accident. They were built, slowly and patiently, by volcanoes — and the way they were built tells geologists a great deal about how the Earth's surface works.

To understand volcanic islands, it helps to picture the Earth's outer shell as a cracked eggshell floating on a layer of hot, slow-moving rock called the mantle. The cracked pieces are called tectonic plates. Most volcanoes form along the edges of these plates, where one plate slides under another. The Aleutian Islands, for example, sit along a boundary where the Pacific Plate dives beneath the North American Plate. As the diving plate descends into the hot mantle, parts of it melt. The melted rock, called magma, is lighter than the rock around it, so it rises. When magma reaches the surface, it becomes lava. Over thousands of eruptions, the cooled lava piles up into a cone tall enough to break above the waves. An island is born.

The Hawaiian Islands form differently, and that difference puzzled scientists for years. Hawaii sits in the middle of the Pacific Plate, far from any plate boundary. There should not be volcanoes there at all. In the 1960s, the geologist J. Tuzo Wilson proposed an answer: a hot spot. He suggested that beneath certain points on Earth, an unusually hot column of mantle rises like a candle flame from the deep interior. The plate above slides slowly across this stationary flame. Wherever the plate sits over the hot spot, magma punches through and a volcano grows. Then the plate moves on, and a new volcano begins behind it, while the older one cools and slowly sinks.

Wilson's idea explains why the Hawaiian Islands form a neat line, and why they get older and smaller as you travel northwest from the Big Island. The Big Island is still over the hot spot today — its volcanoes still erupt — while Kauai, far to the northwest, has not erupted in millions of years and is wearing down to a low green ridge. Even further northwest, the chain continues underwater as a series of dead volcanoes called the Emperor Seamounts.

Volcanic islands do more than make pretty maps. They are some of the few places on Earth where land surfaces are genuinely new. A fresh lava flow, once it cools, is essentially a blank slate. Wind and waves break the rock down into soil. Seeds arrive on the wind or in the stomachs of birds. Insects float in on driftwood. Within a few thousand years — a blink in geologic time — a barren cone can become a forested island full of plants and animals found nowhere else.

That last fact has made volcanic islands invaluable to biologists. Charles Darwin's famous study of finches on the Galápagos Islands, another volcanic chain, helped him develop his theory of evolution. Each island, isolated from the others, had become its own small experiment in how species change to fit their surroundings.

Volcanic islands, in other words, are not just beautiful. They are evidence — evidence of how the planet beneath us moves, and of how life adapts to whatever ground that movement provides.

8. What is the central idea of this passage?

9. Which text structure does the author MOST clearly use in paragraphs 2 and 3?

10. In paragraph 2, the author compares the Earth's outer shell to —

11. According to the passage, why are the Hawaiian Islands arranged in a line that gets older toward the northwest?

12. In paragraph 5, the phrase "a blink in geologic time" is used to suggest that —

13. In paragraph 5, the word barren MOST NEARLY means —

14. Which sentence BEST states the author's overall purpose for writing this passage?

Paired Texts: Poem & Article on Migrating Birds

Read both texts. Then answer the questions that follow. Some questions ask about Passage 1 (the poem), some about Passage 2 (the article), and some ask you to compare both.

Passage 1: "Geese Going South" (poem)

Out of the gray of a cold October sky
they pour like ink across the page,
a long brave line of wings—
honk, honk, the leader calls,
honk, honk, the family answers back.

They have not been told the way.
No one drew them a map.
And yet they know the lake is there—
the same green lake their grandmothers knew—
and they will find it again,
a thousand miles south of here,
before the first snow falls.

I watch from my front yard
and feel small, and lucky,
and a little jealous
of anything that knows so surely
where it ought to go.

Passage 2: How Birds Find Their Way

Every fall, hundreds of millions of birds leave the cold of the northern hemisphere and travel thousands of miles south. The Arctic tern, an extreme example, flies from the Arctic to Antarctica and back — a round trip of about 44,000 miles — every year of its life. For decades, scientists have wondered how birds find their way over such enormous distances, often through weather and over open ocean where there are no landmarks at all.

Research over the past fifty years suggests that migrating birds do not rely on a single tool. They use several. Many species, including geese and pigeons, navigate by the position of the sun during the day and the stars at night. Others appear to detect the Earth's magnetic field through tiny clusters of iron-rich cells in their beaks or eyes — essentially carrying a built-in compass. Young birds also seem to inherit a rough "map" of the route from their parents, though they refine it through experience on their first few flights. A goose making its first migration is not, in other words, blindly guessing.

Even with all of these tools, migration remains a difficult and sometimes deadly journey. Storms blow birds off course. Bright city lights confuse their star-based navigation. The fact that the birds keep finding their way at all is a small miracle of biology — and a reminder that knowing where to go is rarely a single skill, even for creatures who seem to do it effortlessly.

15. In Passage 1, the line "they pour like ink across the page" is an example of —

16. Which line from Passage 1 BEST expresses the speaker's main feeling at the end of the poem?

17. The mood of Passage 1 is BEST described as —

18. According to Passage 2, an Arctic tern's yearly migration is about —

19. Based on Passage 2, which statement is BEST supported?

20. The poem says of the geese, "They have not been told the way. / No one drew them a map." How does Passage 2 COMPLICATE this idea?

21. What is the BIGGEST difference between how Passage 1 and Passage 2 treat the same subject?

22. A reader who finishes BOTH passages would BEST conclude that —

Vocabulary

Choose the best answer or type the correct word.

23. Read the sentence: "The hikers were famished by the time they reached the cabin, having eaten nothing since breakfast." What does famished MOST NEARLY mean?

24. The Latin root aud means "to hear." In which word does this root MOST clearly appear with that meaning?

25. Two writers are describing the same person. One calls her thrifty; the other calls her cheap. Which statement BEST explains the difference?

26. Read the sentence: "After the long drought, even a brief rain felt like a gift." Type the word from the list below that means the OPPOSITE of brief in this sentence.
Choices: short, quick, lengthy, sudden

27. The Greek root tele means "far" or "at a distance." Type the word that names the device that lets you see things that are far away, made from tele + a root meaning "to see."

Revising

Read each excerpt and choose the BEST revision.

28. Read this excerpt from a student's draft:
(1) Our class went on a field trip to the planetarium. (2) The planetarium had a big domed ceiling. (3) On the ceiling were stars. (4) The stars looked very real.
Which is the BEST way to combine sentences 2, 3, and 4 into a single sentence?

29. Read this paragraph from a draft:
(1) Bees are important pollinators. (2) Bees are very important. (3) Without bees, many plants could not produce fruit. (4) Many plants depend on bees.
Which sentence should be DELETED because it is redundant?

30. Read this excerpt:
(1) I forgot my lunch on Tuesday morning. (2) ____ my friend Maya gave me half of her sandwich at noon.
Which transition word fits BEST in the blank in sentence 2?

31. Read this draft sentence:
The dog, which had been sleeping all afternoon, woke up suddenly because of the loud noise that was very loud and startled it.
Which is the BEST revision to remove redundancy and tighten the sentence?

32. Read this paragraph:
(1) Skateboarding looks easy. (2) It is much harder than it looks. (3) Beginners fall many times before they can balance.
Which transition would BEST connect sentence 1 and sentence 2?

33. Read this excerpt:
(1) Carlos enjoys hiking. (2) Carlos enjoys camping. (3) Carlos enjoys watching birds.
Which is the BEST way to combine these three sentences?

Editing

Find the BEST correction for each sentence.

34. Read this sentence:
The team of players are practicing on the field after school.
Which is the BEST edit?

35. Read this sentence:
I love the new bakery on main street, it sells the best cinnamon rolls in town.
Which is the BEST edit?

36. Read this sentence:
Each of the students brought their own water bottle to the field trip.
Which is the BEST edit?

37. Read this sentence:
my brother and i visited aunt rosa in dallas last summer.
Which is the BEST edit?

38. Read this sentence:
The chef prepared a meal that included roasted chicken mashed potatoes and green beans.
Which is the BEST edit?

39. Read this sentence:
Although it was raining hard. We decided to walk to the library anyway.
Which is the BEST edit?

40. Read this sentence:
The librarian recieved a stack of new books and shelved them carefully.
Which is the BEST edit?