PSSA Practice Questions (2026) — Free Sample Questions with Answers

Passage 1: Soup by Candlelight

¹Everyone on Linden Street knew to stay away from Mr. Alvarez. At least, that's what I thought. He lived alone in the gray house next to ours, and the only time I had ever heard him speak was the summer he yelled at my little brother, Dev, for chasing a ball across his yard.

²So when the ice storm knocked out the power on our whole street, I did not expect to spend the evening at his kitchen table.

³It started around four o'clock. The lights flickered, buzzed, and went dark. The refrigerator stopped humming. By dinnertime, our house was so cold that I could see my breath. Mom lit candles and heated a pot of vegetable soup on our little camping stove.

⁴Then she looked out the window at the gray house. "There's no light at all over there," she said. "Mr. Alvarez doesn't have a fireplace. Let's bring him some soup."

⁵"Mom, no," I said. "He doesn't like people." I was sure he would slam the door in our faces.

⁶But Mom was already filling a thermos. Dev grabbed the flashlight, and the three of us crunched across the frozen yard. My heart was pounding as Mom knocked.

⁷For a long time, nothing happened. Then the door opened a crack. Mr. Alvarez stood there wrapped in two sweaters and a wool hat. "What do you want?" he said sharply.

⁸Mom held up the thermos. "Soup," she said. "And company, if you'd like it."

⁹He looked at the thermos. He looked at us. Then, to my surprise, he opened the door wide.

¹⁰His kitchen was even colder than ours. We sat close together around the table while Dev aimed the flashlight at the ceiling so the light spread around the room. Mr. Alvarez ate two bowls of soup without saying a word. Then he pointed at an old photograph on the wall of a woman kneeling in a garden full of red flowers.

¹¹"That's my sister, Lucia," he said. "She planted every tulip in that yard. When she moved to Arizona to be near her grandchildren, I promised to keep them growing just the way she liked." He looked at Dev. "That's why I yelled about the ball. I'm sorry I never explained."

¹²Dev's mouth fell open. So did mine.

¹³For the next two hours, Mr. Alvarez told us stories about the street when he was a boy, back when it was a dirt road and every kid on the block went skating on the pond behind it. He even laughed, a rusty laugh that sounded like it hadn't been used in a long time.

¹⁴When the power came back on near midnight, all of us cheered. Walking home, I looked back at the gray house. A light was glowing in the kitchen window, and Mr. Alvarez was waving.

¹⁵I waved back. I had been wrong about him for a long time.

Passage 2: The Knock at Number Nine

¹By six o'clock, Felipe Alvarez had put on his second sweater. The furnace had gone silent when the power failed, and the cold crept in under the doors like water.

²He sat at the kitchen table in the dark and listened to the ice ticking against the windows. He had a flashlight somewhere, but he could not remember where Lucia used to keep it. Lucia had always known where everything was.

³Across the yard, he could see candlelight moving in the Greenes' windows. He thought about walking over. He could ask if they had an extra blanket. But then he remembered the summer he had shouted at their boy for running through the tulips. They probably thought he was a grumpy old man. Maybe he was.

⁴"I'll be fine," he said out loud to the empty kitchen. The words did not sound very sure.

⁵At seven o'clock, someone knocked. Felipe's heart jumped. He did not want anyone to see how cold the house had become, or how much he had hoped someone would come. He pulled his hat down low and opened the door just a crack.

⁶"What do you want?" The words came out sharper than he meant them to.

⁷Mrs. Greene stood on the step with a thermos. Beside her were her two children, the boy with the flashlight and the girl, who looked like she wanted to run home.

⁸"Soup," Mrs. Greene said. "And company, if you'd like it."

⁹Felipe felt something loosen in his chest. He opened the door wide.

¹⁰The soup was thick with carrots and beans, and it was the first warm thing he had eaten all day. He was so grateful that he could not think of anything to say, so he simply ate. When he finally looked up, he saw the girl glance at Lucia's photograph on the wall.

¹¹Suddenly he wanted them to know. He told them about Lucia and her tulips, and he apologized to the boy. The children's faces changed from worried to curious. Soon Felipe was telling stories he had not told in years—about sledding down Linden Street when it was still a dirt road, and about the pond where everyone skated in winter.

¹²When the lights blinked back on, the children cheered. Felipe walked them to the door and stood in his warm, bright kitchen, waving until they reached their own porch.

¹³After they were gone, he found Lucia's old flashlight in the drawer by the stove, right where it had always been. He set it on the table where he could see it. Tomorrow, he decided, he would bake something and carry it next door himself.

The Kite for Windy Hill

¹Spring Kite Day at Windy Hill Park was only two days away, and Delia Brooks had a plan. She would build her own kite, fly it higher than anyone else's, and maybe even win the blue ribbon for "Best Homemade Kite."

²"Kits are easy," she told her older brother, Ezra, as she dumped a bag of wooden sticks, paper, and string onto the kitchen table. "I'll be done before dinner."

³Ezra picked up the folded instructions. "Step four says to let the glue dry overnight before you attach the sail."

⁴"Overnight?" Delia groaned. "That's way too long. A little glue will dry in an hour." She squeezed a thick line of glue where the two sticks crossed, pressed them together, and counted to sixty. Then she taped the paper sail to the frame, tied on the string, and raced outside.

⁵The wind tugged at the kite as soon as she lifted it. For one wonderful second, it climbed. Then there was a soft crack. The cross stick slid sideways, the sail folded in half, and the kite spun into the grass like a dropped leaf.

⁶Delia stomped back inside. "This kit is junk," she said. "I'm going to ask Mom to buy one at the store."

⁷Ezra didn't argue. Instead, he pointed at the crooked birdhouse on the windowsill. "Do you know why that roof leans?" he asked. "I built it when I was your age. I nailed it together before the paint dried, and the whole thing slid. The second one I made is the one the wrens live in now."

⁸Delia looked at the birdhouse for a long moment. Then she sighed and pulled the broken kite toward her.

⁹This time she read every step out loud. She measured the cross stick with a ruler so it sat exactly in the middle. She wrapped thread around the joint before adding glue, just as the instructions showed. Then she did the hardest thing of all: she left the frame on the table and went to bed. The next morning the joint was rigid, as hard as stone. She stretched the sail tight, checked each knot twice, and wound the string neatly around a cardboard tube.

¹⁰On Kite Day, the air over Windy Hill was barely moving. Bright store-bought kites rose a few feet and then flopped back down. Delia ran, let out a little string, waited, and let out a little more. Slowly, steadily, her red kite climbed until it was a small square against the clouds.

¹¹Near the bottom of the hill, a girl of about six named Fiona was crying over a tangle of string. Delia handed her own spool to Ezra and knelt beside her. "Don't pull," she said. "Pick out one loop at a time." Together they freed the string, and soon Fiona's kite wobbled into the sky beside Delia's.

¹²Delia didn't win the blue ribbon. It went to a boy whose kite was shaped like a dragon. But when the judge asked how she had gotten her kite to fly on such a calm day, Delia grinned. "I waited for the glue to dry," she said.

Text 1: Four Minutes of Night

¹April 8, 2024 — Erie, Pennsylvania

²Today I saw the sun disappear. I am writing this down right away so I don't forget a single thing.

³We drove to the shore of Lake Erie with what felt like half the town. At first, the sky was full of thin clouds, and I was worried that we would miss everything. Dad kept saying, "Give it time." My little sister fell asleep on the blanket, and I ate two peanut butter sandwiches while I watched the clouds drift slowly over the water.

⁴The man on the radio said the moon would first touch the sun at 2:02 p.m. A little after two o'clock, I put on my eclipse glasses and looked up. A tiny bite was missing from the edge of the sun, as if someone had nibbled a cookie.

⁵For the next hour, the bite got bigger and bigger. The sunlight looked strange, kind of silvery, and the shadows of the leaves on the sidewalk turned into little crescent shapes. Dad read from his phone that the air can get several degrees cooler during an eclipse. The air got cooler, and I pulled on my sweatshirt.

⁶We found a spot on the sand next to a family from Ohio who had driven all morning to be there. Their dad told us that Erie was inside the path of totality. Their little boy had made a viewer out of a cardboard box, and he let me look inside. On a piece of white paper at the bottom, the sun was a small, bright circle.

⁷Then everything happened fast. The last sliver of sun turned into a bright dot, and then it was gone. Dad said, "Glasses off—now!"

⁸Where the sun had been, there was a black circle with a glowing white ring around it, soft and wispy like cotton candy. A planet was shining nearby. It felt like evening, but all around the edges of the sky, there was a sunset glow in every direction.

⁹The strangest part was the sound. The birds that had been chattering in the trees went quiet. People all around us cheered and clapped, and then some of them got quiet, too. I felt shivery, and it wasn't only because of the cold.

¹⁰It felt like only a few seconds, but Mom checked her watch and said it was almost four minutes. Then a flash of light burst from one edge, and we all put our glasses back on fast.

¹¹Afterward, everybody on the beach started talking at once. A man next to us said he had seen three eclipses before, and this was the best one. Mom just kept smiling and shaking her head as if she couldn't believe it.

¹²Driving home took forever because of all the traffic. I didn't mind. I kept thinking about that black circle. Dad says the next total eclipse you can see from the lower 48 states won't happen until 2044. I will be thirty years old. I am already planning to go. This time, I will bring my own notebook, and I will start writing the second it is over.

Text 2: When the Moon Covered the Sun

¹A Rare Event On April 8, 2024, millions of people across North America looked up as the moon passed directly between Earth and the sun. For a few minutes, the moon completely blocked the sun's bright face. This event is called a total solar eclipse.

²The moon is about 400 times smaller across than the sun, but the sun is also about 400 times farther away from Earth. That is why the two look nearly the same size in the sky, and why the moon can cover the sun so exactly.

³A partial eclipse, when the moon covers only part of the sun, can be seen from a large area. A total eclipse can be seen only from inside a narrow strip called the path of totality. In 2024, the path was a little more than 100 miles wide. It crossed Mexico, ran across the United States from Texas to Maine, and continued into eastern Canada.

⁴Erie, Pennsylvania, was one of the cities inside the path. Officials there prepared for months, expecting crowds of visitors.

⁵What People Notice Scientists and skywatchers have described the same changes during many total eclipses. As the moon covers more of the sun, the light grows dim, and the temperature can drop by several degrees. Under trees, the small gaps between leaves work like tiny pinhole cameras, so the shadows on the ground can turn into crescent shapes.

⁶When totality begins, the sky darkens quickly. Bright planets and stars may appear. The sun's outer layer, called the corona, becomes visible as a pale glow around the dark disk of the moon. Many animals act as if night has come. Birds may stop singing and return to their nests.

⁷Just before and just after totality, a last bead of sunlight may shine at the edge of the moon. Together with the thin glowing ring, it looks like a ring with a sparkling jewel. Skywatchers call this the diamond ring effect.

⁸Staying Safe It is never safe to look directly at the sun when any part of it is showing. Viewers must wear special eclipse glasses or use a safe viewer. Only during totality, when the sun is completely covered, can people safely look without protection. As soon as the sun begins to reappear, the glasses must go back on.

⁹The Next Chance A total solar eclipse happens somewhere on Earth about every year or two, but any one place may wait hundreds of years between them. The next total solar eclipse that can be seen from the contiguous United States, the 48 states that border one another, will happen on August 22, 2044.

Dancing Directions

¹A honeybee that finds a patch of flowers full of sweet nectar has a problem. Thousands of her sisters back at the hive could help gather the food, but she cannot point, draw a map, or say a word. Instead, she dances.

²A Hive Full of Workers A honeybee colony can have tens of thousands of bees. Most of them are female worker bees. Younger workers stay inside the hive, where they clean, build wax comb, and care for young bees. Older workers become foragers. Foragers fly out to collect nectar and pollen from flowers. A forager may visit hundreds of flowers on a single trip.

³Finding good flowers takes time and energy, so the whole colony benefits when one forager can tell the others exactly where to go. Scientists call the message she gives the waggle dance.

⁴The Waggle Dance When a forager returns from a rich patch of flowers far from the hive, she climbs onto the comb among the crowd of bees. She runs forward in a straight line while shaking her body rapidly from side to side. This straight part is called the waggle run. At the end of the run, she circles back to her starting point, first to one side and then to the other. Then she does the waggle run again and again. Her path looks like a figure eight.

⁵The other bees press close to her. It is dark inside the hive, so they cannot watch the dance the way we would. Instead, they feel her movements with their antennae and pick up the scent of the flowers on her body.

⁶Directions in the Dark The waggle run gives two important pieces of information. The first is direction. Bees use the sun as a guide. The comb hangs straight up and down, so the dancer uses "up" on the comb to stand for the direction of the sun. If she waggles straight up the comb, the flowers are in the same direction as the sun. If she waggles a little to the right of straight up, the flowers are a little to the right of the sun.

⁷The second piece of information is distance. The longer the waggle run lasts, the farther away the flowers are. A short waggle means the food is fairly close. A long waggle means the bees have a long flight ahead of them.

⁸For flowers very close to the hive, foragers usually do a simpler dance, circling in small loops without a long waggle run. This "round dance" tells the other bees that food is nearby and that they should search the area close to home.

⁹Cracking the Code For hundreds of years, beekeepers saw bees dancing, but no one knew what the dances meant. Karl von Frisch, an Austrian scientist, studied bees for many years to find out. He set out dishes of sugar water at different distances and directions from a hive. Then he marked the bees that visited each dish with tiny dots of paint and watched how they danced when they returned. Again and again, the direction and length of the waggle run matched the location of the dish.

¹⁰Von Frisch's discovery changed how people think about insects. It showed that a creature with a brain smaller than a grain of rice can share exact information with others. In 1973, he shared the Nobel Prize, one of the highest honors in science, for his discoveries about animal behavior.

Passage 1: Folding a Wish

¹Take a square of paper. Fold it in half, then fold it again. With enough careful folds, and no scissors or glue, that flat square can become a frog that hops, a box that holds, or a bird with wings that flap. This is the art of origami.

²An Old Art The word origami comes from two Japanese words: ori, meaning "folding," and kami, meaning "paper." People in Japan have folded paper for hundreds of years. Long ago, paper was expensive, so folded paper was saved for special events such as weddings. Over time, as paper became cheaper, origami became something that children and adults everywhere could enjoy.

³Some origami models use just a few folds. Others use hundreds and take hours to finish. Many models begin with the same basic folds. In a valley fold, the paper is folded toward you, so the crease sinks down like a valley. In a mountain fold, the paper is folded away from you, so the crease points up like a mountain ridge.

⁴The Thousand Cranes One of the best-known origami shapes is the crane, a tall bird with long legs and wide wings. In Japan, the crane is a symbol of long life and good fortune. An old tradition says that a person who folds one thousand paper cranes may be granted a wish.

⁵Folding a thousand cranes takes a long time, so people often work together. Friends and families fold cranes and string them into long chains called senbazuru. They give the chains as gifts to people who are sick, as a wish that they will get well. Cranes are also given at weddings and birthdays to wish someone happiness.

⁶Folding for the Future Origami is more than a craft. Folding paper requires following steps in order, lining up edges carefully, and making sharp creases. It also requires picturing how a flat shape will become a solid one. Many teachers use origami to help students learn about shapes, angles, and patterns.

⁷Engineers use origami ideas, too. Some objects that are sent into space, such as solar panels, must be packed into a small space for the launch and then open up to a large size. Engineers have studied origami folds to design objects that fold flat and then spread open smoothly. Scientists are also exploring origami ideas for tiny medical tools that could unfold inside the body.

⁸Whether it is a gift for a friend or part of a spacecraft, a folded shape shows how much can come from a single sheet of paper. The next time you hold a plain square of paper, remember that it might become a gift, a lesson, or even a tool.

Passage 2: Freya's Cranes

¹The first crane Freya ever folded looked more like a crumpled napkin. One wing was bigger than the other, and the neck flopped over as if the bird were very tired.

²"That's all right," said Mr. Ibarra, her art teacher. "Everyone's first crane looks like that. The paper teaches you."

³Freya needed the paper to teach her fast. Her grandfather's eightieth birthday party was only three weeks away. When Mr. Ibarra told the class about the tradition of the thousand cranes, Freya raised her hand before he finished talking. "Could we fold them for my grandpa?"

⁴The class voted yes. Twenty-four students, a thousand cranes. Mr. Ibarra wrote the math on the board: about forty-two cranes each.

⁵At first, Freya folded too fast. She pressed her creases with her thumbnail before the edges lined up, and her cranes came out lopsided. Twice she tore the paper and had to start over. What if they never finished in time? She wanted to crumple the whole stack and throw it away.

⁶Then she remembered something Grandpa always said when they worked on puzzles together: "Slow hands, steady heart." She took a breath. She lined up each corner exactly before pressing. She ran her finger along each crease once, firmly. Her tenth crane stood up straight. Her twentieth had wings that matched.

⁷Every day at lunch, the class folded. Some students folded cranes from wrapping paper, some from old maps, and one boy folded his from the comics section of the newspaper. Freya folded hers from bright blue paper, Grandpa's favorite color. As the pile grew, the room grew quieter. Folding, Freya noticed, made worried thoughts slow down.

⁸Some days were harder than others. On the day Mr. Ibarra counted and the class was still three hundred cranes short, Freya could barely make her fingers work. Mr. Ibarra sat beside her and folded with her, crease for crease, without saying a word. By the end of lunch, she had finished six cranes, and her hands had stopped shaking.

⁹After three weeks, they counted. Nine hundred ninety-nine. Mr. Ibarra handed Freya one last square of blue paper. "The thousandth is yours," he said.

¹⁰That Saturday, Freya and her mother carried the cranes into the community center in a laundry basket, strung on long threads like colorful rain. Her aunt helped them hang the chains along the windows of the party room. When the sun came through, the paper birds glowed. Grandpa's oldest friend said he had never seen so many cranes in one room.

¹¹Grandpa looked at them for a long time. Then he reached for Freya's hand. "A thousand wishes," he said softly. "How did you find the patience?"

¹²Freya smiled. "Slow hands," she said.

¹³"Steady heart," Grandpa finished. Then he laughed so hard that his glasses slipped down his nose.

Student Draft

¹(1) Lots of people fold paper. (2) It is fun.

²(3) In "Folding a Wish," the author explains that folding paper cranes can be a way to send a wish to someone who is sick. (4) Friends and families string cranes into chains called senbazuru. (5) They give them as gifts.

³(6) In "Freya's Cranes," Freya's class folds a thousand cranes for her grandpa. (7) ______ the folding helps Freya. (8) She learns to have patience and to slow down her worried thoughts. (9) She folds the paper and makes the lines sharp.

⁴(10) That is why paper is good.