California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress Science Grade 5

1.A sealed jar looks empty, yet it is full of air. What does the air inside show about matter?

2.A soft basketball sits on a scale. Air is pumped in, the ball is sealed, and it is set on the scale again. What should the scale reading do?

3.A closed lunch container holds an ice pack. The ice melts, the container stays shut, and nothing spills. What is true of the mass?

4.Salt is already in a closed jar of water, sitting on a scale. The salt then dissolves until no grains show. How does the total mass compare with the mass before it dissolved?

5.A magnet is held near a steel paper clip, a copper penny, a wooden pencil, and a plastic ruler. Which object does the magnet pull?

6.Two gray spoons look alike. One sticks to a magnet and the other does not. Which property tells the spoons apart?

7.A metal spoon and a wooden spoon sit in the same hot soup. Soon the metal handle is much hotter than the wooden handle. Why?

8.At a lake, a heavy log floats and a small stone sinks. The log weighs more than the stone. Why can the heavier object float?

9.Juice poured from a bottle takes the shape of the glass. The glass bottle keeps its own shape. Which statement matches those materials?

10.Someone peels an orange in the kitchen. A minute later a person in the hallway smells it without seeing the fruit. What is the best explanation?

11.A foam block and an iron block are the same size. The iron block has much more mass. What does that comparison show?

12.One sheet of paper is torn into small bits, and none of the paper is thrown away. What kind of change is that?

13.A nail left in a damp yard grows a reddish-brown coat. That coat is a different material from the shiny metal underneath. What happened?

14.A rock sample has a mass of 6 kilograms on Earth. On the Moon, gravity pulls less than it does on Earth. What is true of that same sample on the Moon?

15.Wood burns in an open campfire ring. The ash left behind has less mass than the wood had. What happened to the rest of the matter?

16.A pale mineral leaves a scratch on a glass plate. The glass does not scratch the mineral. Which property is greater for the mineral?

17.Salt is stirred into warm soup until no grains can be seen. Every spoonful tastes equally salty. What is that salty soup?

18.Sand is stirred into a jar of water. When the stirring stops, the sand settles on the bottom and the water above it looks clear. What is the sand and water?

19.A hiker's bag holds whole almonds and dried cranberries. Each piece still looks and tastes like itself. What is in the bag?

20.A sentence on the board says that every solution is a mixture, but not every mixture is a solution. Which pair of examples fits?

21.Sugar is stirred into tea until the grains are gone, and the tea tastes sweet. A student says the sugar was destroyed. What is the better claim?

22.A fruit salad contains grape pieces, banana slices, and orange segments. Why can someone lift out only the grapes?

23.Air around a playground is mostly nitrogen and oxygen, with smaller amounts of other gases mixed in. What is air?

24.After salt dissolves in water and no grains remain, has the salt become a new substance?

25.An ice cube melts into a puddle, and later that water evaporates. What is true about the water through these changes?

26.Ice cubes float near the top of a pitcher of liquid water instead of sinking to the bottom. Why?

27.A kettle boils, the water level drops, and a visible cloud forms above the spout. A student says the water turned into air. What is the better description?

28.On a warm afternoon, droplets appear on the outside of a glass of cold juice. The juice level inside has not fallen. Where did the outside water come from?

29.Under ordinary air pressure, at what temperature does ice melt?

30.A steel stapler, a cup of milk, and the air of the room are all on or around a desk. Which list names their states in that order?

31.A tray of water goes into a freezer and comes out as ice. What changed, and what stayed the same?

32.A bottle is filled to the brim with water, capped, and left in a freezer. The bottle cracks. Why can freezing do that?

33.A young redwood gains a large amount of mass as it grows. Minerals from the soil are only a small part of that new mass. Where does most of the new mass come from?

34.What materials and energy does a leaf use to make food, and what gas does that food-making release?

35.Which plant part is the main place where sunlight is captured for making food?

36.A carrot plant sends roots into damp soil. What do those roots do for the plant?

37.After a rain, water that entered through the roots later reaches the leaves. Which job of the stem does that show?

38.Bees move pollen among apple blossoms. Later those blossoms produce seeds. What is the flower's role?

39.A bean seed split open shows a tiny plant and a store of food. Why is that stored food there?

40.A barrel cactus in the Mojave Desert has a thick green stem and sharp spines instead of broad leaves. How do these structures help in a dry place?

41.A geranium on a classroom windowsill bends toward the glass over several days. Why does the plant grow that way?

42.Many animals take in oxygen with lungs or gills. Which organisms release a large share of the oxygen those animals use?

43.Healthy leaves look green. What does chlorophyll do with light to cause that color?

44.A maple tree stays in one place and does not eat other organisms. How does it get energy-rich food?

45.A gray whale swimming along the California coast rises to the surface and blows a spray before it dives again. How does the whale get oxygen?

46.A red-tailed hawk tears meat with a hooked beak. A sparrow cracks seeds with a shorter, thicker beak. What do the two beaks show?

47.A green katydid rests on a green leaf while a hunting bird passes and does not notice it. How does the insect's color help?

48.A garden spider has eight legs and two main body sections. A ladybug has six legs, antennae, and three body sections. Which statement is correct?

49.A penguin cannot fly, yet it has dense feathers and spends long periods in cold ocean water. What do those feathers do?

50.A bobcat has sharp pointed teeth. A mule deer has broad flat teeth. How do those teeth fit what each animal eats?

51.Frog eggs in a pond hatch into tadpoles that have gills and no legs. Later those animals have legs and lungs and can sit at the pond's edge. What does this life cycle show?

52.When danger is near, a desert tortoise pulls its head and legs in toward its shell. How does the shell help the tortoise?

53.A barn owl hunts after dark. It can hear a mouse move in dry grass and can see in dim light. What do those sense organs allow the owl to do?

54.Many bones in a flying bird contain hollow spaces. How does that structure help the bird?

55.A cottontail eats clover that made its food using sunlight. The rabbit gets energy from that meal. Where did the energy in the meal begin?

56.A meadow diagram shows grass, a grasshopper, and a frog. The arrows should show the direction energy moves. Which set is right?

57.Grass is eaten by a rabbit, and the rabbit is eaten by a coyote. Which organism in that chain is the producer?

58.A fallen oak log slowly crumbles as fungi spread through the wood, and the remains mix into the forest floor. What role are the fungi playing?

59.A grassland has a huge mass of grass, fewer grasshoppers, still fewer lizards, and only a few hawks. Why is less energy stored in the hawks than in the grass?

60.A mouse eats seeds and also eats grasshoppers. A snake eats the mouse. A hawk eats both the snake and the mouse. Why does a food web fit this better than one straight chain?

61.A black bear eats berries, nuts, and fish. A mule deer eats plants. A mountain lion eats animals. Which labels fit the bear, the deer, and the lion, in that order?

62.A student draws energy starting at a shark, then moving to small fish, and then to algae. What is wrong with that path?

63.Dead leaves fall in a redwood grove. Decomposers break them down, and a seedling later takes in minerals from that soil. What does this show about matter?

64.A mushroom grows on a rotting stump in deep shade. It does not make food from sunlight. How should it be placed in a food web?

65.Monday in Sacramento is rainy and cool. Tuesday is sunny and warmer. What are those two days describing?

66.Death Valley is usually very dry and hot across many years. One January week brings an unusual rain. What is the best description of that week?

67.A student needs to know how much rain fell today, how warm the air is, and the direction the wind comes from. Which tools match those jobs, in that order?

68.Afternoon clouds build over the Sierra Nevada. What are those clouds made of?

69.Water from the Pacific becomes water vapor and later falls as rain on the Coast Ranges. What supplies the energy that drives this water cycle?

70.Which list names only forms of precipitation?

71.Water vapor in rising air cools and becomes cloud droplets. What is that change called, and what is the change from liquid water to gas called?

72.Cities near the equator usually have warmer climates than cities near the poles. What is the main reason?

73.A town high in the Sierra Nevada has many years of records showing cooler conditions than a town in the Central Valley. What is being compared?

74.On a coastal afternoon, air starts to move and the flags stream inland. What is wind, and what helps cause it?

75.Where is most of Earth's water, and where is most of Earth's fresh water?

76.Sand grains settle in a layer. Over a long time they are pressed and cemented into sandstone, and a shell fossil is found in it. What kind of rock is sandstone?

77.Lava pours from a vent and cools into dark rock. Melted rock can also harden underground. What type of rock forms when melted rock cools?

78.Limestone deep underground is heated and squeezed until it becomes marble. It does not melt. What type of rock is marble?

79.Ice wedging cracks pieces off a cliff, and the pieces stay there for a while. Later a river carries them downstream. Which sentence uses the science words correctly?

80.A handful of garden soil shows tiny rock bits, dark crumbled leaves, a damp feel, and small air spaces. What is soil?

81.Hikers find fossil clams in a layer of sandstone high on a dry desert mountain. What is a careful conclusion?

82.A road cut shows flat sedimentary layers that have not been overturned. A fossil is in a lower layer, and a different fossil is in a higher layer. Which layer was deposited first?

83.A town gets some electricity from sunlight and some from coal. Coal formed from ancient plants over a very long time. Which comparison is right?

84.A storm drops rain, the rain washes hillside soil into a stream, and trout live in that stream. Which Earth systems are interacting?

85.California has many earthquakes along cracks where large pieces of crust move past one another. Scientists map those places. What is the stronger statement?

86.A school wants to use fewer natural resources over the year. Which action fits that goal?

87.The Sun lights the playground at noon. Other points of light appear in the night sky. What is the Sun?

88.A flagpole's shadow is short near midday and much longer in the late afternoon. When is a shadow like this longer?

89.Astronomers know stars that are larger than the Sun and stars that are hotter. Even so, the Sun dominates the daytime sky. Why does it look so bright and large?

90.California has daylight while another part of Earth has night. About 24 hours later, daytime returns to California. What motion causes day and night?

91.Early in the morning the Sun is low in the eastern sky, and a soccer goal casts a long shadow. Which way does that shadow fall?

92.A wooden board in sunlight casts a dark shadow. A clear window pane in the same sunlight casts almost none. Why is the board's shadow so much darker?

93.A student can read a wall poster when the classroom lights are on and cannot read it in a completely dark room. How does seeing the poster work?

94.The Moon looks bright at night even though it does not make its own light the way the Sun does. Why does the Moon shine?

95.Earth is closest to the Sun in January. In the Northern Hemisphere, January is still winter. What causes the seasons?

96.On a clear evening the Moon is a thin crescent. A student says Earth's shadow is covering the rest of the Moon. What is the crescent?

97.At the same moment, a student drops a heavy rock and a lighter rock from the same height. Air resistance is not what matters in this drop. What happens?

98.Moving outward from the Sun, the first four planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Which place in that order is Earth?

99.Earth spins all the way around once, and Earth also travels once around the Sun. What time spans match those two motions?

100.Among the eight planets, which is the largest, and which is the smallest?

101.Mercury is closer to the Sun than Venus is, yet Venus has the hotter surface. Why is Venus the hottest planet?

102.Earth keeps traveling around the Sun instead of flying off in a straight line. What holds Earth in its orbit?

103.During a lunar eclipse, the full Moon darkens for a while as it passes through a shadow. Whose shadow is that, and how is it different from a crescent?

104.A California star chart shows Orion high on winter evenings and not on summer evenings. The stars did not disappear. Why does the night sky change with the seasons?

105.A bright streak flashes across the night sky and is gone in a second. A friend calls it a shooting star. What is it actually?

106.Through a small telescope, Saturn shows a wide, bright set of rings. What is Saturn, and what are those bright rings mainly?

107.A ball dropped in California falls toward the ground. A ball dropped in Argentina also falls toward the ground there. What explains both drops?

108.Through a northern California night, most stars seem to circle, but Polaris stays nearly in one spot. Polaris is also not the brightest star in the night sky. Why does it stay put?