This book holds four flashcard decks: 140 cards written to the 42 West Virginia science standards the Grade 5 test can sample, from Policy 2520.3C, the West Virginia College- and Career-Readiness Standards for Science. Every card is a new item. Read the front, answer in your head, then turn the page to flip it. (The real test is online, computer-adaptive, and untimed, with 18 scored items, six each from Physical Science, Life Science, and Earth and Space Science, and the cards are spread the same way: 47, 47, 46.)
Note: this is a grade-band test. It can ask about the grade 3, 4 and 5 science standards, not only grade 5. Every answer card prints the grade its standard belongs to: 47 cards are grade 3, 42 grade 4, and 51 grade 5.
What’s inside
- Four color-coded decks of 35 cards each: Like Test Day (test-style questions), Key Concepts (one idea per card), Vocabulary (the terms the standards use), and Trouble Spots (the ideas West Virginia’s standards single out as easy to confuse)
- Like Test Day cards written the way the WVGSA asks them: multiple choice and select-two questions with figures, tables, and data
- Key Concepts cards that ask your child to explain an idea, then show the principle and a worked example
- Vocabulary cards that define each term in the language the standards use
- Trouble Spots cards whose wrong choices are the exact mix-ups students make, plus seven that ask your child to judge a student’s claim. Three of the seven are correct
- The answer on the very next page: the correct answer, a plain-language explanation, and a Tip that names the mistake behind the wrong choices
- A drawing on all 140 cards, each drawn for its own card and never repeated, plus 25 data tables
- Scenes set across West Virginia, from the New River Gorge and Harpers Ferry to Lost World Caverns and Summersville Lake
- The West Virginia standard each card tests, printed on the back word for word with its category and grade
- Each deck in its own color; the amber box is always a Tip
- A letter to families on how the test is built and scored, with test-taking tips
- A Study Reference printing all 42 standards
- A Quick Answer Key for the two question decks
Topics covered
- Balanced and unbalanced forces, magnets, and Earth’s gravity
- Speed, energy, collisions, and devices that convert energy
- Waves, seeing by reflected light, and patterns that carry information
- Properties of materials and matter made of tiny particles
- Weight conserved when substances change or mix, and new substances
- Plants growing mostly from air and water, and energy in food from the sun
- Matter moving among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment
- Life cycles, inherited traits, and traits shaped by the environment
- Weather, climate, rock layers, fossils, weathering, and erosion
- Earth’s water, its four spheres, resources, and natural hazards
- The sun’s brightness, shadows, day and night, and the stars of each season
Why parents and teachers choose Smart Stars
- Written by educators who study West Virginia’s own standards and test documents
- Four ways to study the same 42 standards, not one worksheet format repeated
- All 140 cards are original items written for West Virginia, not adapted from another state
How to use this book
Work through one deck in order the first time, then jump to any deck from the table of contents. Answer before turning the page, read the back even when you were right, and note the standard on every missed card. Start with Like Test Day and save Trouble Spots for last. Ten to fifteen cards a day beats one long sitting.
Search “Smart Stars West Virginia WVGSA” on Amazon for additional West Virginia test prep titles.
The four decks
- Like Test Day (35 cards): Each card is a test-style question written to the WVGSA Grade 5 Science test.
- Key Concepts (35 cards): Each card asks you to explain one science idea from the WVGSA Grade 5 Science test.
- Vocabulary (35 cards): Each card is a single term used on the WVGSA Grade 5 Science test.
- Trouble Spots (35 cards): Each card is built on a distinction the West Virginia science standards draw and students most often blur: weight against volume, mixing against a new substance, weathering against erosion, a bright star against a near one, evidence against explanation.Some cards give you a claim a student wrote and ask you to judge it.
How the cards work
Read the front of a card, answer it in your head, then turn the page. The answer card shows the answer, a worked explanation, a Tip naming the mistake behind the wrong choices, and the exact West Virginia standard the card tests. When you miss a card, write down the reporting category and the West Virginia standard printed on its answer page. Those are the questions to practice again before test day.
Color code. Each deck has its own color on every card, so you always know which deck you are in. The amber box is always a Tip.
