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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 "Comets" by Camille Flammarion in Wonders of Earth, Sea, and Sky (1902) edited by Edward Singleton Holden.
These tailed bodies, which suddenly come to light up the heavens, were for long regarded with terror, like so many warning signs of divine wrath. Men have always thought themselves much more important than they really are in the universal order; they have had the vanity to pretend that the whole creation was made for them, while in reality the whole creation does not suspect their existence. The Earth we inhabit is only one of the smallest worlds, and therefore it can scarcely be for it alone that all the wonders of the heavens, of which the immense majority remains hidden from it, were created. In this disposition of man to see in himself the center and the end of everything, it was easy indeed to consider the steps of nature as unfolded in his favor, and if some unusual phenomenon presented itself, it was considered to be without doubt a warning from Heaven.
If these illusions had had no other result than the amelioration of the more timorous of the community one would regret these ages of ignorance; not only were these fancied warnings of no use, seeing that once the danger passed, man returned to his former state, but they also kept up among people imaginary terrors, and revived the fatal resolutions caused by the fear of the end of the world.
When one fancies the world is about to end—and this has been believed for more than a thousand years—no solicitude is felt in the work of improving this world; by the indifference or disdain into which one falls, periods of famine and general misery are induced which at certain times have overtaken our community. Why use the wealth of a world which is going to perish? Why work, be instructed, or rise in the progress of the sciences or arts? Much better to forget the world, and absorb oneself in the barren contemplation of an unknown life. It is thus that ages of ignorance weigh on man, and thrust him further and further into darkness, while Science makes known by its influence on the whole community, its great value, and the magnitude of its aim.
The primary purpose of this passage is to __________.
convince the reader of the benefits afforded to mankind by science
explain the significance of comets to humanity
decry the influence of religion upon mankind
analyze the historical understanding of comets
undermine the self-centered perspective of humanity
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All ISEE Middle Level Reading Resources
