Official sample questions

Life Science:  Characteristics and Growth of Organisms

Standard 4.L.5: The student will demonstrate an understanding of how the structural characteristics and traits of plants and animals allow them to survive, grow, and reproduce. 
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• How would you describe what you see in the diagram?
• What factors might affect the rate of growth as shown in the photo?
• What traits might a carrot inherit?  
• What traits of a carrot are influenced by the environment?

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• What are some of the differences between vertebrates and invertebrates?
• How are vertebrates further classified?
• How are invertebrates further classified?

• This is a Katydid or a Bush Cricket.  How do you think this animal is able to protect itself?​
• What other animals can you think of that camouflage themselves?
• Which animals hibernate?
• Which animals migrate?

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• Are the traits shown below inherited or influenced by the environment?
• Why do you think these traits are not learned?
• If a trait is influenced by the environment, can it be passed on to offspring?

Practice questions about Living Things:

Answer is C.

Answer is B.

​Earth Science:  Weather and Climate

Standard 4.E.2: The student will demonstrate an understanding of the water cycle and weather and climate patterns.

• What does this diagram represent? 
• How does each process happen?
• The diagram has "collection" labelled, what else could it be called?
• Which process represents water becoming water vapor?  
• Which process represents water vapor cooling and returning to the liquid form?

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• Watch today's weather forecast.   WCNC News​
• What do the letters L and H mean?  
• What other symbols do you recognize on this map?  
• What do the numbers mean? 

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• What gases make up the Earth's atmosphere? 
• Study the graph.  What do you notice?
• What do you think the red line represents? 
• Would it be correct to say the amount of Oxygen has increased each year for the past 1000 years?
• How many years ago did the amount of Oxygen show a decrease?
• What questions do you have about the oxygen content of Earth's Atmosphere based on the graph?

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• What type of graph is this? 
• What information do we find labeled on the axes?
• What correlations do you see?
• Would it be true to say that the summer months have the most rainfall?

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• Which type of severe weather would you have a warning about for up to a week in advance? 
• Which type(s) of severe weather would a warning maybe occur an hour in advance?
• Is there a difference between a tornado watch and a tornado warning?
• Both tornadoes and hurricanes involve low  pressure systems and rotational winds, but what are the differences between these types of storms?
• Do weather maps have specific symbols for these storms?  What are the symbols? 

 

Practice Questions about Weather:

Answer is D.

Answer is D.

Earth Science:  Stars and the Solar System

​Standard 4.E.3: The student will demonstrate an understanding of the locations, movements, and patterns of stars and objects in the solar system. 

• How do these diagrams compare? 
• Can you tell the order of the planets based on the diagrams?
• Which planets are the terrestrial planets?
• Which planets are the gas giants?
• Which planets would be the ice giants?

• What is a constellation?
• Do constellations change?
• How do the two constellations below compare?
• Where is the North Star?

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• Do you see a pattern in the calendar below?
• What causes our view of the moon to change each day?
• What do we call the different moon phases?

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• What important vocabulary words come to mind with the image below?  
• What do those terms mean?

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Click the picture to watch a video and learn how the astrolabe works.

Click the picture to learn how a sextant works.

Practice Questions about the Solar System:

Answer is B.

Answer is D. 

​​Physical Science:  Forms of Energy - Light and Sound

​Standard 4.P.4: The student will demonstrate an understanding of the
​properties of light and sound as forms of energy.


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• What is white light made of?
• Look at how the light enters the prism as compared to how it exits the prism.  What causes this?  How do we refer to this property of light?
• If we use a different prism, will the colors of light always exit in the same order?  Why? or why not? 

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• Why do we see objects in color?
• How do we see the color blue?
• Where do all of the colors of the rainbow originate?

Read about how we
​see color.

• A 4th grader set up this science experiment.  What do you think the student was trying to find out? 
• Since you have studied light, what would your hypothesis be?
• What can you tell about light intensity from this setup?
• What will the student need to do to take care of the plants?  Should he do this to all of the plants or some of them
• What might the student need in order to collect data from this experiment?
• What would be the best type of graph for the student to graph his data?  (line, circle, or bar)

• How do the images below compare?  
• How does light pass through each?
• What else can you think of that is transparent?
• What else can you think of that is translucent?
• What's something you can think of that is opaque?

• Study the chart below.   It shows common decibel levels - is this related to pitch or volume?  How do you know?
• Click the picture below.  Take the Free Hearing Test.  How does the sound, in the hearing test, change in order to test sound?
• What do you learn about sound from this online oscilloscope?

The title of the graph is at the bottom.  The higher the number of Hertz represent a higher pitch.  Different animals have a different range of hearing.  

• Dogs can hear slightly __________ frequencies than humans.
• Dogs can hear much __________ frequencies than mice.
• Frogs have a __________ range of hearing frequency as compared to many other animals.
• Elephants can hear very __________ pitched sounds, down to 0Hz.

https://www.school-for-champions.com/senses/hearing_pitch.htm#.YE-KMpNKhsM

Answers:  higher,  lower,  smaller,  low

-Study the keyboard. 
-From left to right, each C represents a higher pitch C. 
-Pitch is a measure of frequency, which is measured in Hertz (abbreviated as Hz).

• What would be the frequency of the C with the highest pitch shown?
• Can you calculate the frequency of the first C based on the others that are shown?

Answers: 532.2 Hz,  65Hz

Practice Questions about the Light and Sound:

Answer is C.

​A few test-taking tips:

1.  Understand that you will see things on SCPASS that look unfamiliar.  Read it, study it, try to figure it out.  Don't be frightened by things that look unfamiliar.
 
2.  Take your time.  There is no time limit on SCPASS. 

​3.  Read the question, and think of the answer before you read any of the answer choices. There will be 4 answer choices - 1 correct and 3 incorrect.  If you don't know what you are looking for, you can easily be distracted by the 3 incorrect answers.