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The Lower Level Reading section of the ISEE contains five passages with five questions. Your child will be tasked with inferencing, identifying main ideas, and drawing conclusions through the passages. The test is designed to assess your child’s skills in the concepts they have learned over the past year, ensuring that they have the grasp necessary to progress. They can prepare for the ISEE Lower Level Reading section through a combination of success throughout their school year, and practice. They can use Varsity Tutors’ Learning Tools alongside their schoolwork, which can help them more easily digest ideas and concepts. The Question of the Day is one such tool that allows for random, daily practice in the concepts that will be covered on the test.
The ISEE Lower Level Reading section test practice should cover the concepts that your child genuinely needs to study, rather than every concept that will be on the test. They can use the daily questions to identify the areas that they may need to work on, and the areas that they don’t need to focus on heavily. Your child can then choose the concepts they focus on, optimizing their study time to increase its value. Even if they don’t have a ton of time, studying the areas that need more work may help them to retain the information better. Your child may get a question based on ideas, language, or textual relationships within historical, scientific, contemporary life, and humanities.
Each Question of the Day is chosen at random to allow your child to randomly practice in the core and specific concepts of Lower Level Reading. Upon answering, the tool provides them with the concept name and an explanation of the answer. This explanation breaks the concept behind the answer down to determine the why instead of simply the “how.” The “why” is where you can truly tell if your child has a full grasp of the question. If they don’t understand “why,” then they may not be able to perform those concepts as well on the ISEE Lower Level Reading section.
The randomization of the daily question gives your child the chance to spontaneously quiz themselves on various concepts. This keeps the information fresh, and allows for easier recall. With the additional information provided by the daily question, they can use other Varsity Tutors’ Learning Tools for more free Lower Level Reading section review. For instance, your child can use flashcards, Learn by Concept, full-length practice tests, and smaller practice tests focused by topic and difficulty level.
Reading comprehension is a valuable skill throughout every field of study your child may choose, and it is important to have good study habits early on to help later in life. When these habits are formed earlier, your child has a better opportunity to take their education further. Use the Learning Tools to help your child study for the ISEE Lower Level Reading section to assist them with building a solid academic foundation. This foundation will assist your child as they move to middle- and upper-level coursework in the future.
Question of the Day: ISEE Lower Level Reading
Adapted from A Child’s History of England by Charles Darwin (1905)
As great and good in peace as he was great and good in war, King Alfred never rested from his labors to improve his people. He loved to talk with clever men and travelers from foreign countries and to write down what they told him for his people to read. He had studied Latin after learning to read English, and now another of his labors was to translate Latin books into the English-Saxon tongue, that his people might be interested and improved by their contents. He made just laws, that they might live more happily and freely; he turned away all partial judges, that no wrong might be done them; he was so careful of their property, and punished robbers so severely that it was a common thing to say that under the great King Alfred, garlands of golden chains and jewels might have hung across the streets, and no man would have touched one. He founded schools, and he patiently heard causes himself in his Court of Justice. The great desires of his heart were, to do right to all his subjects, and to leave England better, wiser, and happier in all ways than he found it. His industry in these efforts was quite astonishing. Every day he divided into certain portions, and in each portion devoted himself to a certain pursuit. That he might divide his time exactly, he had wax torches or candles made, which were all of the same size, were notched across at regular distances, and were always kept burning. Thus, as the candles burnt down, he divided the day into notches, almost as accurately as we now divide it into hours upon the clock. But when the candles were first invented, it was found that the wind and draughts of air, blowing into the palace through the doors and windows and through the chinks in the walls, caused them to gutter and burn unequally. To prevent this, the King had them put into cases formed of wood and white horn. And these were the first lanterns ever made in England.
All this time, he was afflicted with a terrible unknown disease, which caused him violent and frequent pain that nothing could relieve. He bore it, as he had borne all the troubles of his life, like a brave good man, until he was fifty-three years old; and then, having reigned thirty years, he died. He died in the year nine hundred and one; but, long ago as that is, his fame, and the love and gratitude with which his subjects regarded him, are freshly remembered to the present hour.
The information that King Alfred suffered from a “terrible unknown disease” is meant to highlight __________.
Alfred’s resolve and virtue
the lack of medical knowledge in the time period being discussed
the lack of doctors in Alfred’s English kingdom
Alfred’s inability to focus on himself
the abundance of disease in England during the medieval period
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