Create an account to track your scores
and create your own practice tests:
One of the tests you may need to take before high school is the High School Placement Test, or HSPT. The test has multiple-choice questions that cover five subjects. The HSPT has reading, math, language, verbal, and quantitative sections. Anyone will tell you that the key to passing a major test is through preparation before you take the test. If you’re looking for free HSPT Reading section test practice, Varsity Tutors’ Learning Tools have your back! You can choose from several different free practice options, including the Question of the Day. Every day, you can answer a free random question that pertains to the HSPT Reading section.
The Question of the Day changes on a daily basis. Each question is pulled from a massive collection of free HSPT Reading section practice tests. When you are registered with the website and you answer the question each day, you get a full assessment based on how you did, including any past questions that you may have answered. You are given key information that can provide valuable insight into your learning needs. You can see what concepts you most frequently get incorrect, and where you are at your strongest, allowing you to focus your studies on that particular area through other Learning Tools, such as Learn by Concept, flashcards, or full-length practice tests.
The Question of the Day provides further intelligence into your HSPT Reading section test preparedness, such as what percentile you would be placed by ranking you among anyone else that answered the question, and how long you took to answer the question. The information is further able to be used to help you create a specific study plan based on your individual needs, allowing you to use your study time on materials that you need to study. Through the randomization, you reap the benefits of rotating through different topics, such as ensuring the information is fresh in your mind, and preventing boredom related to sticking to the same topic.
With Varsity Tutors’ Learning Tools, you have the ability to study a wide range of different HSPT Reading section concepts. The Question of the Day covers them all at random, allowing you to have a quick refresher on a daily basis. You’ll be asked questions pertaining to the following HSPT Reading section topics: contemporary life, natural science, humanities, and social science. These may focus on comparison, contrast, main ideas, passage reasoning, authorial purpose, implied characteristics, inferring, predicting, concluding, cause and effect, fact and fiction, and details. In addition, there are questions for defining vocabulary words, finding the meaning among multiple possible meanings, and using context clues to determine word choice.
Before it’s time for you to take the HSPT, take the time to review the Question of the Day and other Learning Tools. They offer a valuable combination of focused study on core concepts, as well as free practice testing to determine how ready you really are. Rather than simply memorizing different ideas and facts, you can use your study time to test yourself on your true knowledge.
Question of the Day: HSPT Reading
Adapted from The Fight at the Pass of Thermopylæ by Charlotte M. Yonge (1876)
The troops sent for this purpose were from different cities, and amounted to about 4,000 who were to keep the pass against two millions. The leader of them was Leonidas, who had newly become one of the two kings of Sparta, the city that above all in Greece trained its sons to be hardy soldiers, dreading death infinitely less than shame. Leonidas had already made up his mind that the expedition would probably be his death, perhaps because a prophecy had been given at the Temple at Delphi that Sparta should be saved by the death of one of her kings of the race of Hercules. He was allowed by law to take with him 300 men, and these he chose most carefully, not merely for their strength and valor, but selecting those who had sons, so that no family might be altogether destroyed. These Spartans, with their helots or slaves, made up his own share of the numbers, but all the army was under his generalship. It is even said that the 300 celebrated their own funeral rites before they set out lest they should be deprived of them by the enemy, since, as we have already seen, it was the Greek belief that the spirits of the dead found no rest till their obsequies had been performed. Such preparations did not daunt the spirits of Leonidas and his men, and his wife, Gorgo, not a woman to be faint-hearted or hold him back. Long before, when she was a very little girl, a word of hers had saved her father from listening to a traitorous message from the King of Persia; and every Spartan lady was bred up to be able to say to those she best loved that they must come home from battle "with the shield or carried upon it."
Why did the Spartans celebrate their funeral rites before they departed?
They thought they might live through the battle.
They wanted to be with their families when observing the ceremonies.
None of these answers
They wanted to be near the temple.
They feared the enemy would deprive them of the opportunity to be buried with a funeral.
Certified Tutor
All SSAT Middle Level Reading Resources
