Pennsylvania System of School Assessment Science Grade 5

1.At a Harrisburg market, a student holds an apple and says it is one solid piece with no smaller parts inside. What is the apple made of?

2.In a rocky stretch of the Susquehanna, a smallmouth bass swallows a crayfish. Which feeding role does the bass have in that moment?

3.After a flood, a bank along the Susquehanna had lost soil that was there the day before. Was that change to the bank constructive or destructive?

4.A puddle on a warm sidewalk in Reading shrinks through the afternoon until the pavement is dry. The water did not flow into a drain. What happened to the water?

5.A thunderstorm soaks Point State Park in Pittsburgh for one afternoon, then the sky clears before evening. Which description fits the storm?

6.A class in Scranton lists the energy behind their food, the local wind, and the warmth of the sidewalk. Which source supplies most of the energy for those surface systems?

7.A granite cobble sits still on the shore at Presque Isle. The cobble is a solid. What are its particles doing?

8.On a sugar maple in the Poconos, a caterpillar chews a green leaf. Which words name the maple and the caterpillar in that feeding link?

9.Where the Juniata River slows on the inside of a bend, a sand bar stands a little higher after each high flow. What is building the bar?

10.Early hikers at Ricketts Glen find water drops on ferns even though it did not rain overnight. The air cooled before dawn. How did the drops form?

11.Over many winters, Erie gets much more snow than Philadelphia. A student studies thirty years of those records. What do the records describe?

12.At noon on a sunny day at Presque Isle, the dry beach sand feels hot while the lake water beside it still feels cool. What explains that difference?

13.A camper near Cook Forest pours apple juice from a bottle into a cup. The juice matches the cup's shape. What does that show about the liquid?

14.A shelf fungus grows on a fallen hemlock in a shady Pocono ravine and breaks the wood down. What is the fungus doing in that forest?

15.Water seeps into a crack in sandstone on a Pocono cliff. The water freezes, the crack widens, and a flake of rock breaks loose but stays at the cliff. What process is this?

16.Beside a cold brook at Worlds End, a white mist hangs in the air. A student says that white mist is water vapor itself. What is accurate?

17.Lancaster has one unusually hot afternoon in April, then temperatures return to the usual cool spring pattern. What is the best conclusion?

18.In March, dark garden soil in Allentown is bare, and a nearby patch is still covered with snow. Both get the same sunlight. Which surface warms more, and why?

19.A sealed jar of ice sits on a porch in State College. The ice melts, the jar stays closed, and no water enters or leaves. How does the weight compare?

20.A stream card for a Pocono brook shows this food chain: algae, then an arrow to a mayfly, then an arrow to a brook trout. What does the arrow into the trout mean?

21.A storm on Lake Erie washes a wide strip of beach sand from Presque Isle into the lake. The next morning the beach is narrower. Which statement fits?

22.On a hot day, a sycamore along the Schuylkill gives off water vapor from its leaves. Which water-cycle process is that?

23.After a night of rain, a rain gauge in a Harrisburg school garden holds water. What does that water in the gauge tell the class?

24.A hiker on the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania eats a cheese sandwich and uses that energy to climb. Where did the energy stored in the food begin?

25.A soft pretzel from a Lancaster market is broken into four pieces. Nothing is eaten, and no crumbs are lost. How does the total weight of the pieces compare with the whole pretzel?

26.A white-tailed deer in the Allegheny National Forest spends the evening eating buds and leaves. It eats no animals that night. Which feeding role fits the deer?

27.Wind along Presque Isle slows behind a clump of beach grass, and sand settles into a small dune. What is happening to that sand?

28.After a gentle rain in Gettysburg, water disappears into a flower bed instead of running down the path. The soil looks darker and damp. What moved the water into the soil?

29.A wind vane on a barn roof near Lebanon points west. What has the class learned from the vane?

30.A barn near State College has a solar panel on the roof. Sunlight hits the panel, and a lamp inside turns on using that panel. What energy change is this?

31.At a fall fair, a student stirs 10 grams of sugar into 200 grams of warm cider in a covered cup. The sugar disappears from sight. Nothing spills, and the cover stays on. What is the weight of the mixture?

32.A black bear in the Poconos eats blueberries in July and later catches a fish in a stream. What do those two meals show about the bear?

33.During one high flow on a bend of the Susquehanna, the outer bank loses soil while a bar on the inner bank gains sand. Which description matches both changes?

34.In April, deep snow on a Pocono hillside melts, and the brook below runs higher than it did in March. How is that snowmelt moving through the water cycle?

35.The thermometer outside a classroom in York reads 8 degrees Celsius just after sunrise. What is being measured?

36.A student in Erie says Pennsylvania is warm in July because Earth is closest to the Sun then. Earth is actually closest to the Sun in early January. What makes a Pennsylvania summer warm?

37.A basketball in a Philadelphia gym is filled with air. A student says the air inside is nothing. Which statement is correct?

38.In a French Creek food web, a hellbender eats crayfish, a bass also eats crayfish, and a heron eats the bass. Why is a web a better model here than one straight chain?

39.In a Pennsylvania limestone valley, a cave has opened in the rock over a very long time, and rainwater played a part. Which process fits that result?

40.A teacher in Sunbury says rain falling on the Susquehanna today may once have been water in the ocean, in a cloud, or in a plant. What does that idea show?

41.An anemometer spins quickly on a ridge at Hawk Mountain while another anemometer in a sheltered valley spins slowly. What are the two instruments comparing?

42.Earth is nearest the Sun in early January. A camper at Cherry Springs still needs a heavy coat that week. Why is Pennsylvania cold then?

43.In a cabin at Promised Land, someone peels an orange in the kitchen. A minute later a person in the hallway smells it, although the orange stays in the kitchen. What explains the smell?

44.A turkey vulture near Gettysburg feeds on a deer that died in a field. Later, bacteria and fungi break down what is left. Which description fits?

45.Moraine State Park sits by a ridge of mixed rock and sediment that melting glacial ice left in western Pennsylvania. How did that ridge form?

46.A clear spring bubbles from a hillside near Bellefonte and feeds a brook. No rain is falling there that morning. Where is this water coming from?

47.A barometer in the Laurel Highlands shows the air pressure falling, and clouds thicken through the day. Which weather outcome often goes with that change?

48.In January, a south-facing slope in the Poconos has melted patches, while a north-facing ravine nearby still holds deep snow. Both slopes had similar snowfall. Why the difference?

49.Sand from a Susquehanna sandbar contains black iron bits and pale quartz grains. A magnet lifts only some of the pieces. Which pieces does it lift?

50.Algae on sunny rocks in the Susquehanna are the producers for many insects there. A long stretch of cloudy, muddy water sharply reduces the algae. What is the likely result?

51.Two slopes above Pine Creek get the same heavy rain. One is bare soil. The other is covered with grasses and plant roots. Less soil leaves the planted slope. Why?

52.Rain falls on a hill near Wilkes-Barre and runs into a creek that joins the Susquehanna. If that water stays with the river, which larger body can it reach?

53.A family studies many years of Harrisburg records: cold winters, warm summers, and precipitation in every season. What do those records describe?

54.Two picnic tables stand in a Pocono park at noon. One is under a wide hemlock, and the other is in the open. The open tabletop is hot, and the shaded tabletop is cooler. Why?

55.A sealed bag of popcorn kernels weighs 80 grams. The kernels pop, and the bag stays sealed. No kernels or steam leave the bag. What is the weight after popping?

56.A young oak along the Delaware River makes its own food while its leaves are in sunlight. Which statement names the inputs and outputs of that food-making?

57.At the Delaware Water Gap, the river passes through a ridge instead of ending at the mountain wall. Over a very long time, what did the moving water do?

58.Lake Wallenpaupack is not boiling, yet on a dry, windy day water leaves the lake surface and the air above feels moist. What is happening?

59.Thick fog sits over the West Branch of the Susquehanna at dawn and is gone by midmorning. A student calls the fog the climate of the river. What is accurate?

60.A rock at Mount Davis feels warm in late-afternoon sun and cooler late at night under a clear sky. What changed for the rock?

61.Ice floats in a bucket of cold river water at a fishing dock on the Allegheny. The ice and the liquid are both water. Why does the ice stay on top?

62.A child hiking at Ohiopyle uses energy from food, breathes in oxygen, and breathes out carbon dioxide. Which statement matches those inputs and outputs?

63.A gardener near Lancaster lifts a handful of soil and finds tiny rock grains plus dark bits of decayed leaves. What is this soil mostly made from?

64.Moist air rises over the Poconos on a humid afternoon. Higher up, the air is colder, and a puffy cloud appears. What formed the cloud?

65.A tall, dark cloud towers over the Laurel Highlands. Thunder cracks, and heavy rain begins. Which cloud is most likely overhead?

66.On a sunny afternoon in Allentown, air over a hot parking lot rises, and cooler air from a shaded park drifts in to take its place. What started this motion?

67.In a Warren classroom, a small iron nail and a large dry pine cone sit on a table. The nail weighs more than the pine cone. What does that show?

68.In mud beside a slow backwater of the Susquehanna, one bacterium divides, and two cells are present where one cell had been. What is that change called?

69.After a wet spring, several large rocks leave a steep slope and come to rest at the bottom of a gorge at Ricketts Glen. What moved them down the slope?

70.A spring storm near Johnstown drops hail and then rain. Earlier that week the same town had snow. What do hail, rain, and snow share?

71.A student in Harrisburg says, "It rained at lunch, so our climate is a rainforest." The rain stopped within an hour, and long records show many dry lunch hours. What should the student be told?

72.A student imagines the Poconos with sunlight blocked for a long time, so plants can no longer make food. What happens to the food web?

73.A dry log weighs 4 kilograms before it burns in an open fireplace in a Jim Thorpe cabin. Afterward the ash in the grate weighs much less, and smoke has left through the chimney. What best explains the missing weight?

74.Spotted lanternflies in southeastern Pennsylvania feed on sap from grapevines and trees. Heavy feeding can weaken those plants. What role are the lanternflies playing?

75.After many floods, a farm field along the Susquehanna has a thicker layer of fine silt than it had years ago. The silt was left behind when the floodwater slowed. What change is that?

76.On a clear, cold morning at Cowans Gap, ice crystals coat a picnic table. It did not rain or snow. The air held invisible water vapor. How did the frost form?

77.Students in Erie want to describe their climate rather than this week's weather. Which information should they use?

78.Philadelphia is in daylight at the same moment a place on the opposite side of Earth has night. What explains that difference?

79.Hot cider sits in a mug at a Pocono cabin. An hour later, beside a cool window, the cider is cooler, and none has spilled. What is different about its particles?

80.Beavers on a tributary of the Allegheny pile sticks and mud until a dam slows the stream. A pond forms, and wetland plants start growing at the edges. What did the beavers change?

81.Pennsylvania's Appalachian ridges are rounded and lower than many young mountain chains. Their rocks show a very long history of being worn down. Which statement fits?

82.A willow on an island in the Susquehanna takes water in through its roots. On a hot afternoon, water vapor leaves its leaves. What does the willow do in the water cycle?

83.A cold front passes through Pittsburgh in the late afternoon. Storms form as it arrives, and by evening the air is cooler than it was at lunch. What often follows a cold front?

84.Sunlight has warmed the beach sand at Presque Isle. A bare foot on that sand feels heat moving into the skin. How does energy from the Sun reach the foot?

85.During one March week at Presque Isle, students see lake ice and liquid lake water. They also learn that the clear air holds invisible water vapor. A student thinks these must be three different substances. What is accurate?

86.A great blue heron stands in a shallow pool at John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge and swallows a fish. It does not eat plants on this hunt. Which role fits the heron?

87.A small stream enters a quiet cove on Raystown Lake. Where the stream meets the still water, a fan of mud and sand is building outward. What builds the fan?

88.Cold air crosses the open water of Lake Erie in December, takes up water vapor, and snow falls on towns just inland from Presque Isle. Which water-cycle path does that snow finish?

89.High above Blue Mountain, thin wispy clouds streak the sky. No thunder is heard, and the clouds look icy and feathery. What are these clouds made of?

90.A sugar maple in the Lehigh Valley makes food while its leaves are in sunlight. The tree later uses that food to grow a new twig. Where is energy from the Sun after the food is made?

91.A sandstone cobble from the Susquehanna contains a certain amount of matter. If that same cobble were on the Moon, what would be true?

92.A robin in Valley Forge eats dogwood berries and later drops the unharmed seeds in a field across the park. What has the robin done with that plant material?

93.Hickory Run has a wide field of huge sandstone boulders. The field fits a long history of freezing and thawing that broke the bedrock, with gravity shifting the pieces. Which idea matches that field?

94.Rain falls on streets in Erie, flows through storm drains into a creek, and reaches Lake Erie. The lake already holds a huge amount of water. What role is the lake playing here?

95.A class in Williamsport sets out a thermometer, a rain gauge, and a wind vane. Which match of tools and measurements is correct?

96.In December, sunlight reaches Harrisburg at a low slant, and the day is shorter than a day in June. What does that slanted sunlight do to the ground?

97.At a dock on Pymatuning, air in a closed bottle can be forced into a smaller space, but the water that fills another bottle cannot. Why?

98.At Hawk Mountain, a hawk eats a snake, the snake had eaten a mouse, and the mouse had eaten seeds. The hawk does not end up with all of the energy that was in the seeds. Why not?

99.During a flood, the Susquehanna looks muddy near Harrisburg. The brown color comes from soil the river is carrying. What is the river doing with that soil?

100.A heavy shower hits a paved lot in Reading. Water sheets across the pavement into a storm drain that leads to a creek. Little of the water soaks in. Which path is this?

101.Forty years of records in State College show that July is usually much warmer than January. This July includes one cool week. What does the forty-year July-versus-January pattern describe?

102.In a Pocono ravine, the same kind of fern grows in deep shade and in a sunny opening, with similar soil and water. The ferns in the opening grow more. What limits the shaded ferns?

103.Two closed boxes in a Pittsburgh classroom are the same size. One is full of feathers. The other holds the same volume of dry sand. The sand box is much heavier. What is true?

104.Monarch caterpillars in a Lancaster meadow eat milkweed leaves. Mushrooms nearby break down dead stems. Which set of roles is correct?

105.Grooves in bedrock in northern Pennsylvania line up with the path of an ice sheet that once covered that region, including parts of the Poconos. Rock was scraped away. What kind of change did the moving ice cause there?

106.A July afternoon in Philadelphia feels sticky, but the sky is clear and no cloud is overhead. A student says clear air cannot contain water. What is accurate?

107.In the morning, Scranton is sunny and 10 degrees Celsius. By late afternoon a storm has dropped the temperature to 4 degrees Celsius. How should the class describe this day?

108.Water leaves the surface of the Susquehanna faster on a hot, sunny day than on a cold, cloudy day. The river is the same river. Why does the sunny day send more water into the air?