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The ISEE Upper Level Reading section assesses your child’s abilities in the skills required for reading comprehension. It is an important test for those seeking to enter a private high school. They are tested on their ability to interpret linguistics, which are skills that should have developed throughout the lower and middle educational levels. The ISEE Upper Level Reading section uses passages drawn from sciences, humanities, essays, contemporary life, and other literature. With such a variety, your child will need to have the general skill for reading comprehension, rather than knowledge of the specific topic at hand. This allows this section of the test to truly assess their reading comprehension skills. With the increased difficulty in Upper Level Reading, it is important to devote some time to preparation ahead of the test by using Varsity Tutors’ Learning Tools like the Question of the Day.
The Learning Tools serve as viable study aids to help your child practice the concepts they have learned at school. Your child can use the variety of tools together or individually to create a study plan, and go from there. The Question of the Day is a valuable option that offers your child access to free daily test practice online. The Question of the Day is a timed question that is different each day, allowing you to determine how well your child understands the information that will be tested in the ISEE Upper Level Reading section.
With ISEE Upper Level Reading, your child will need to be able to focus on the key aspects of each passage. There are thematic elements, local organization, and other details that can make the difference in your child’s chosen answer. They will need to pay attention to each supporting idea, interaction between ideas, textual relationships, and other ideas that are less straightforward than in lower levels. You can help your child to prepare for these by encouraging them to study regularly and determinedly. Through ongoing practice, these skills can become second nature, readily accessed as they are needed. Your child can use the Learning Tools for precisely this level of practice.
The Learning Tools offer free ISEE Upper Level Reading section practice tests that your child can use to review information, practice concepts, and evaluate their preparation level. Through this, your child can further customize their study plan by addressing the areas that they need to work on most. In addition, they can use the flashcards to work on quick refresh, study in their free time, and identify any weak points. There are also full-length practice tests that are built to be similar to the real exam, and Learn by Concept, which offers a thorough review on each concept.
The Question of the Day uses passages pulled from contemporary life, history, science, and humanities essays. Your child may be asked to identify the supporting ideas, the main theme, the general idea behind the passage, any figurative language, infer the meanings behind conclusions, or draw a conclusion, as well as compare and contrast, make predictions, and discuss textual relationships. Further, they may need to compare the different themes for contradictions, or rewrite the summary in their own words. No matter what, your child can take their time, and answer the question when they are confident.
When it comes to studying for ISEE Upper Level Reading section, your child can use Varsity Tutors’ Learning Tools to strengthen their grasp on the concepts they will be tested on.
Question of the Day: ISEE Upper Level Reading
Adapted from "Preface: The Maypole and the Column" in Extemporary Essays by Maurice Hewlett (1922)
In days of more single purpose than these, young men and maidens, in the first flush of summer, set up a maypole on the green; but before they joined hands and danced round about it they had done honor to what it stood for by draping it with swags of flowers and green-stuff, hanging it with streamers of diverse colors, and sticking it with as many gilt hearts as there were hearts among them of votive inclination. So they transfigured the thing signified, and turned a shaven tree-trunk from a very crude emblem into a thing of happy fantasy. That will serve me for a figure of how the poet deals with his little idea, or great one; and in his more sober mood it is open to the essayist so to deal with his, supposing he have one. He must hang his pole, or concept, not with rhyme but with wise or witty talk. He must turn it about and about, not to set the ornaments jingling, or little bells ringing; rather that you may see its shapeliness enhanced, its proportions emphasized, and in all the shifting lights and shadows of its ornamentation discern it still for the notion that it is. That, at least, is my own notion of what the essayist should do, though I am aware that very distinguished practitioners have not agreed with me and do not agree at this hour. The modern essayist, for reasons which I shall try to expound, has been driven from the maypole to the column.
Certainly, the parent of the Essay draped no maypoles with speech. Montaigne was a sedentary philosopher, of the order of the post-prandials; a wine-and-walnuts man. One thing would open out into another, and one seem better than the other, at the time of hearing. "Je n'enseigne point; je raconte," he tells you of himself; and it is true. To listen to him is a liberal education; yet you can hardly think of Montaigne footing it on the green. Bacon's line, again, was the aphoristic. He shreds off his maypole rather than clothes it: but he has one set up. He can give his argument as witty a turn as the Frenchman when he pleases—"There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's sake, but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honor, or the like. Therefore why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me?" That is the turn his thoughts take upon Revenge, and a fair sample of his way with an abstract idea—shredding off it all the time, getting down to the pith. But he can be very obscure: "A single life doth well with Churchmen; for charity will hardly water the ground where it must first fill a pool." That is proleptic reasoning. We are to caper about the pole before the ornaments are on.
Given the context, the phrase "footing it on the green" used in the passage's second paragraph most likely means __________.
taking a walk
dancing
teaching a subject
playing golf
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All ISEE Upper Level Reading Resources
