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The ISEE contains a portion that focuses on Middle Level Reading. The section is made up of 25 questions separated amongst five texts. The questions task your middle school level child with determining the main ideas, making inferences, and identifying conclusions with these passages. The ISEE Middle Level Reading test review Learning Tools offer you the option to assess your child’s abilities in those areas. Your child is able to work with a variety of options, which all function as standalone study aids and work well together. One such valuable study aid offered by Varsity Tutors’ Learning Tools is the Question of the Day. This is a question that is changed on a daily basis using the practice tests that are based on the test itself. Whether you are using the tools to enhance your child’s learning at school or to help them study for the ISEE, your child can get free daily test practice.
When your child is studying Middle Level Reading, they should take some time to figure out what concepts they need to really improve in. If your child is spending time on material they are already solid in, they are wasting the time they could be using on the more important areas. By determining specific areas of weakness, your child would be able to spend less time overall studying, since they are only working on what they need. Of course, your child can use the Learning Tools to regularly look back and refresh on the material they haven’t been practicing as much.
Throughout the ISEE Middle Level Reading test practice, your child will look into contemporary life passages dealing with ideas, details, themes, supporting ideas, text analysis, tone, figurative language, style, relationships between texts like cause and effect, logic, organization, genre, compare and contrast, predictions, and inferences. They look at the same basic concepts in history, science, and humanities. With the Question of the Day, they will be tested on each of these concepts. Your child gets free daily test practice from a phone, tablet, or computer at any time of the day. In fact, they are given a full analysis based on their answer, which details their percentile, compares their right vs wrong, and thoroughly explains the reason for the answer.
Anytime your child isn’t sure of why they got the answer correct or incorrect, it is important to check the explanation at the bottom. It provides a detailed breakdown of the core concept, and how it applies to the problem or text at hand. If your child needs to study the concept further, you can choose other Learning Tools, such as flashcards, Learn by Concept, or the practice tests. These offer your child additional practice at each concept, and they can choose to use one tool or use them all for a comprehensive review.
With Varsity Tutors’ Learning Tools, you can reinforce the material that your child has learned in class, as well as keep their memory fresh without spending a dime. Your child can use the Learning Tools to practice for ISEE Middle Level Reading section as long as they need to, combining them to create a valuable study guide.
Question of the Day: ISEE Middle Level Reading
Adapted from "Wasps" by Thomas G. Belt in A Book of Natural History (1902, ed. David Starr Jordan)
One day I saw a small black and yellow banded wasp hunting for spiders; it approached a web where a spider was stationed in the center, made a dart towards it—apparently a feint to frighten the spider clear of its web; at any rate it had that effect, for it fell to the ground, and was immediately seized by the wasp, who stung it, then ran quickly backwards, dragging the spider after it, up a branch reaching to the ground until it got high enough, when it flew heavily off with it. It was so small, and the spider so cumbersome, that it probably could not have raised it from the ground by flight.
All over the world there are wasps that store their nests with the bodies of spiders for their young to feed on. In Australia, I often witnessed a wasp engaging with a large flat spider that is found on the bark of trees. It would fall to the ground, and lie on its back, so as to be able to grapple with its opponent; but the wasp was always the victor in the encounters I saw, although it was not always allowed to carry off its prey in peace. One day, sitting on the sandbanks on the coast of Hobson’s Bay, I saw one dragging along a large spider. Three or four inches above it hovered two minute flies, keeping a little behind, and advancing with it. The wasp seemed much disturbed by the presence of the tiny flies, and twice left its prey to fly up towards them, but they darted away with it. As soon as the wasp returned to the spider, there they were hovering over and following it again. At last, unable to drive away its small provocateurs, the wasp reached its burrow and took down the spider, and the two flies stationed themselves one on each side of the entrance, and would, doubtless, when the wasp went away to seek another victim, descend and lay their own eggs in the nest.
Why is the wasp annoyed by the presence of the flies?
The flies will alert spiders to the presence of the wasp, rendering the wasp’s endeavors less productive.
The flies will lay their eggs inside the wasp’s nest, which will consume the food meant for the wasp’s young.
The flies will consume the spider’s body themselves, leaving the wasp without food.
The flies are impossible for the wasp to catch and so the wasp will have to go hungry.
The flies are an inconvenience to the wasp because they force the wasp to hide the spider more carefully.
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