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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 “The Little Mermaid” by Hans Christian Andersen in Hans Anderson’s Fairy Tales: A New Translation by Mrs. Paull (1867 ed.)
The Sea King had been a widower for many years, and his aged mother kept house for him. She was a very wise woman, and exceedingly proud of her high birth; on that account she wore twelve oysters on her tail, while others, also of high rank, were only allowed to wear six. She was, however, deserving of very great praise, especially for her care of the little sea princesses, her granddaughters. They were six beautiful children; but the youngest was the prettiest of them all. Like all the others, she had no feet, and her body ended in a fish's tail.
All day long they played in the great halls of the castle, or among the living flowers that grew out of the walls. The large amber windows were open, and the fish swam in, just as the swallows fly into our houses when we open the windows, excepting that the fishes swam up to the princesses, ate out of their hands, and allowed themselves to be stroked.
Outside the castle there was a beautiful garden, in which grew bright red and dark blue flowers, and blossoms like flames of fire; the fruit glittered like gold, and the leaves and stems waved to and fro continually. Each of the young princesses had a little plot of ground in the garden, where she might dig and plant as she pleased. One arranged her flower-bed into the form of a whale; another thought it better to make hers like the figure of a little mermaid; but that of the youngest was round like the sun, and contained flowers as red as its rays at sunset.
She was a strange child, quiet and thoughtful; and while her sisters would be delighted with the wonderful things which they obtained from the wrecks of vessels, she cared for nothing but her pretty red flowers, like the sun, excepting a beautiful marble statue. It was the representation of a handsome boy, carved out of pure white stone, which had fallen to the bottom of the sea from a wreck. She planted by the statue a rose-colored weeping willow. It grew splendidly, and very soon hung its fresh branches over the statue, almost down to the blue sands. Nothing gave her so much pleasure as to hear about the world above the sea. She made her old grandmother tell her all she knew of the ships and of the towns, the people and the animals. To her it seemed most wonderful and beautiful to hear that the flowers of the land should have fragrance, and not those below the sea; that the trees of the forest should be green; and that the fishes among the trees could sing so sweetly, that it was quite a pleasure to hear them. Her grandmother called the little birds fishes, or she would not have understood her; for she had never seen birds.
This passage is best described as __________.
descriptive
persuasive
nonfictional
instructional
scary
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All ISEE Middle Level Reading Resources
