Give your fourth grader the confidence to succeed on the science portion of the Wisconsin Forward Exam.
Five full-length practice tests (225 questions) aligned to the Wisconsin Standards for Science (2017). Science is tested on the Forward Exam at grades 4 and 8 only, so this is the first and only elementary science assessment most Wisconsin families meet, and little practice material exists for it.
BUILT THE WAY THE REAL TEST IS BUILT. The test runs in three sessions of fifteen questions, and the numbering starts again at 1 in every session: so a child sees “1” three times in one sitting. Every test here does the same. Practiced only on continuous numbering, a student meets that first on test day.
MOST QUESTIONS ARRIVE IN SETS. 180 of the 225 sit in one of 45 sets: each opening with a passage, data table, diagram, or model, then four questions about it. The other 45 stand alone, the mix Wisconsin uses: the information is in front of the student, and the work is deciding what it means.
NOT ONE QUESTION CAN BE ANSWERED FROM MEMORY. Every item asks a child to use what is given. Of the 225 questions, 78 sit at Depth of Knowledge level 2 and 147 at level 3: not a single level 1 recall question, because the real test has none.
A FULL SITTING, AND NO WASTED QUESTIONS. A real Grade 4 form runs 45 questions but only 40 of them count. The other five are field-test questions: items being tried out for future tests, which look exactly like the rest, so a student cannot tell which is which. That is why the sitting runs 45 while Wisconsin scores it out of 40, its four categories carrying 8 to 12 points each. Each test here is the same 45-question sitting, so practice runs the true length and your child builds the stamina for it: the difference being that all 45 here are scored-style questions with full explanations, so no practice time goes on a question that would not have counted.
What’s inside
- The same category balance on every test: 12 Life Science, 12 Physical Science, 12 Earth and Space Science, 9 Engineering
- 188 four-choice questions, 22 “choose two,” and 15 two-part questions asking for the evidence behind the answer: the three types Wisconsin uses. No written response, because the test has none. Engineering is folded into the other sets, never given its own reading
- 43 original data tables and 16 original diagrams (sound waves, rock layers, a beaver dam, a fox listening for a vole under snow) drawn to be measured, not decorated
- Wrong answers are real fourth-grade mistakes, so a wrong choice tells you what to reteach
- Wisconsin settings named throughout: Neenah, Baraboo, Portage, Viroqua, Rhinelander, Menomonie, Muscoda, the Kickapoo and Chippewa Rivers, Vilas County, the Driftless Area
- A family letter, seven test-specific tips, a Grade 4 Science Study Reference, and a Quick Answer Key
Take one test at a time in a quiet space. The exam is untimed: let your child finish all three sessions in one sitting. Read every explanation, including for right answers, and space the tests over weeks.
Topics covered
- LIFE SCIENCE: animal and plant structures and the jobs they do; how animals take in information and act: echolocation, alarm calls, a tongue that reads scent; inherited versus learned behavior; surviving a Wisconsin winter
- PHYSICAL SCIENCE: energy of motion and stored energy; transfer through friction and burning; heat moving warm to cool; sound as vibration, with loudness from wave height and pitch from spacing; light, shadow, reflection, and color; signals sent over distance
- EARTH AND SPACE SCIENCE: the glaciers that shaped the state and the Driftless Area they missed; erosion and deposition; rock layers and fossils; Wisconsin water from cranberry marshes to the spring melt; natural hazards and resources
- ENGINEERING: defining a problem before designing; fair comparisons; choosing what to measure; judging whether a design worked