2018 STAAR Grade 5 Science

By Huntsville ISD
Last updated over 2 years ago
36 Questions
Content accessed from https://tea.texas.gov/student-assessment/testing/staar/staar-released-test-questions
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1.

Which of these devices is the only one NOT designed to produce both sound and light energy?

SCI.5.6a
2.

The diagram shows layers deposited under a body of water. This layering continued for millions of years.


What most likely happened to the dead plants and animals?

SCI.5.7a
3.

After a trip to an aquarium, some students compared the tail fin of sharks with the tail fin of bony fish. The students made a chart listing characteristics of each type of tail fin.


Based on this information, what is most likely an advantage of the bony fish tail fin over the shark tail fin?

SCI.5.10a
4.

A student places 250 g samples of clay, sand, gravel, and silt in separate flower pots. The pots are set on a wire rack, and dishes are placed beneath the pots so that water can drip through holes and collect. The student then pours 100 mL of water over the sample in each pot. The student measures the time it takes for water to begin dripping from the bottom of each pot.


What property of soils is the student most likely examining with this procedure?

SCI.4.7a
5.

The table lists some physical properties of two objects.


Based on their properties, which of the objects is most likely a metal?

SCI.5.5a
6.

Which of these describes one or more living organisms that depend on another living organism to survive?

SCI.5.9a
7.

The picture shows an athlete hitting a ball with a tennis racquet.


What is the athlete demonstrating in the picture?

SCI 3.6B
8.

A partial wetland food web is shown.


Which statement correctly describes the transfer of energy in a food chain in this wetland?

SCI.5.9b
9.

A group of students is performing an investigation to measure how much liquid water is produced from a 10 L sample of snow. What must occur in order for the students to perform this investigation?

SCI 3.5C
10.

A bright-red male cardinal comes to a school bird feeder every morning. Like other cardinals, this bird makes a sharp chirping sound as it hops around the bird feeder.

Which of these is a learned behavior of this bird?

SCI.5.10b
11.

One type of fuel was used for thousands of years before other fuels were commonly used. Which fuel is an alternative resource that was most likely the first fuel used by humans?

SCI.5.7c
12.

Some students are feeding a crab in an aquarium. They use tongs to place the food directly in front of the crab.


The students look through the side of the aquarium. They notice that the image of the tongs appears to break as the tongs enter the water.

Which property of light are the students observing in this situation?

SCI.5.6c
13.

Students on a field trip observed a valley and wondered how it was formed. The three major characteristics of the valley were recorded.


This valley was most likely formed by —

SCI.5.7b
14.

The abalone is a type of sea snail. Adult abalones slowly crawl over rocks near the shore, while larvae float in the water.


Which organisms have a life cycle that is most like that of abalones?

SCI 3.10C
15.

This circuit has five light-emitting diode, or LED, lights. It also has one battery and one switch.


Which LEDs produce light when the switch is in the position shown?

SCI.5.6b
Students are investigating properties of objects. They observe four objects and record observations for each object in the table.


16.

Based on the students’ observations, which of these tables properly identifies the objects?

SCI.5.5a
17.

This diagram shows two stages in the life cycles of ladybird beetles and grasshoppers.


Based on the diagram, which statement best compares the life cycles of these two types of organisms?

SCI.5.10c
18.

The Grand Canyon is more than 400 km long and in some places almost 2 km deep. Which model best represents the main process that formed the Grand Canyon?

SCI.5.7b
19.

Students design an experiment to determine how much force is needed to move blocks of wood of different masses slowly across a lab table.


Which procedure should students include in their design?

SCI.5.6d
20.

The leaves of two types of plants that live in different environments are shown in the pictures.


The leaves of both plants have different structures. What differences in the structure of the leaves of these plants likely help them survive in their environments?

SCI.5.10a
21.

A teacher asks students to explain what they see in this picture. Four student explanations are shown in the box.


Which of the students gave a correct explanation?

SCI.5.8c
22.

A family takes a group picture in a park where bluebonnets are blooming. The family notices that some of the blooms are white and others are blue.

The color of the blooms is most likely determined by —

SCI.5.10b
23.

A beaker with 115 mL of solution has a temperature of 21°C. The solution contains 5 g of salt and 115 mL of water. Students added two ice cubes to the solution and stirred the solution with a stirring rod.

Which properties of the solution changed as the ice cubes melted?

SCI.5.5d
24.

A student conducts an investigation by shining a flashlight toward a flat mirror. The student changes the angle of the mirror and observes the path of the reflected light.


As the mirror changes direction, the light reaching the mirror can reach the ceiling because the light —

SCI.5.6c
25.

A science class has an aquarium in which fish and aquatic plants are growing. How is carbon dioxide directly involved in the survival of organisms in the aquarium?

SCI.5.9d
26.

A family was vacationing in the mountains in a cabin that had no electrical power. They needed boiling water in order to prepare dried soup mix.

With no electrical energy available, which method would most likely provide enough thermal energy to quickly heat the water to boiling?

SCI.5.6a
27.

A partial food web from the Texas Piney Woods is shown.


How many types of organisms in this food web obtain energy directly from producers?

SCI.5.9b
28.

The picture below shows a cumulonimbus cloud forming over an ocean.


Which statement best explains how the sun and the ocean interact to form a cumulonimbus cloud?

SCI.5.8b
29.

A student measured out 10 mL of four clear liquids and added one drop of a different-colored dye to each liquid. One of the liquids was water. The student then carefully poured each liquid into a graduated cylinder and let the mixture settle for 30 minutes. The student observed that the liquids had separated into layers, as shown in the diagram.


Which of these procedures would help the student identify the layer of water?

SCI.5.5a
30.

Woody plants have many different kinds of leaves. Some leaves have very smooth edges, while other leaves have jagged edges, as shown in the diagram. The characteristics of plant leaves vary with the climate in which the plant naturally grows. Some scientists discovered an area with many fossilized leaves of woody plants. The scientists used data from samples of 100 leaf fossils to compare the number with smooth-edged leaves and the number with jagged-edged leaves.


The scientists concluded that the plants had grown in a hot climate.

Which graph most likely represents the data from the investigation?

SCI.5.7d
31.

The circuit below does not work.


Which procedure would most likely allow the bulbs to light?

SCI.5.6b
32.

Aquatic plants have adaptations that help them live in water. For example, the structures needed for making food are located on the tops of floating plant leaves.

This adaptation helps the plants —

SCI.5.9a
33.

This simple diagram shows a system used to heat a house. Water is pumped from the house through a series of pipes underground, where the water is warmed. The warmed water returns to the house to supply heat on cold winter days.


Which type of alternative energy resource is used to supply heat to the house?

SCI.5.7c
34.

The table lists the characteristics of four types of animals.


What features do the ecosystems in which these animals live most likely have in common?

SCI 3.9A
35.

A student stirs 15 grams of each substance listed below into 200 milliliters of water to form four different mixtures. The student then tries to separate the water from each mixture by pouring the mixture through a kitchen tea strainer.


Which mixture can the student separate most easily with the strainer?

SCI.5.5c
36.

Which statement best describes the processes of weathering and erosion?

SCI.5.7a