1. "Although the museum was crowded, Priya found an empty seat upstairs."
Which part is the main clause — the part that could stand alone?
ICAS English Paper A (Year 3)
Paper A is the entry level of ICAS English, sat by Year 3 students. Entry is through your child's school, an ICAS testing centre or an ICAS partner, not through us.
Last updated: 17 October 2026
What the paper looks like
Forty-five questions in 45 minutes — a minute a question, which is the pattern up to Paper D; Papers E and F allow a little more. Most of it is multiple choice; unlike ICAS Maths, the English papers have no typed-answer section at any level.
Most of the paper is built on short passages, each followed by a set of questions. Expect a fable or a short narrative, a poem, and something factual. There is usually a cloze passage as well, where words have been removed and you choose what fits.
The four things it actually tests
- Text comprehension — what the passage says, and what it implies
- Vocabulary — what a word means in that sentence, not its dictionary definition
- Syntax — how a word or phrase is working in the sentence
- Writer's craft — why the writer made a particular choice
Why comprehension is not the hard part
Most Year 3 students can find information stated directly in a passage. That is not what separates results.
The questions that do are the ones asking why — why a character did something, why the writer used that word rather than a plainer one, what the poem is getting at. These require holding the whole passage in mind rather than scanning for a matching word, and that is a genuinely different skill from the comprehension worksheets done at school.
Where Year 3 students lose marks
- Vocabulary in context. A word they know one meaning of, used in another.
- Questions with no matching words in the passage. If the answer can be found by scanning, most children find it; when it cannot, many guess.
- Poems. Short, unfamiliar, and often the first thing on a paper a child has ever been asked to interpret under time.
What the mark will look like
ICAS marks run lower than school tests by design. The paper keeps stretching students well past year level, so a result that looks disappointing on a school scale can be a strong ICAS result — read it against the distribution rather than as a percentage.
How to prepare for Paper A
Read together and ask one question afterwards — not "what happened", but "why do you think she did that". That single habit builds the skill the paper is actually testing.
Common questions
Which year level sits ICAS Paper A?
Year 3. ICAS names its papers by letter rather than by year — Paper A is Year 3 and Paper F is Year 8 — so a Year 3 student sits Paper A.
How long is English Paper A?
45 questions in 45 minutes.
What kind of reading questions are on Paper A?
Not mainly the ones asking what happened. The questions that separate students ask why a writer chose a particular word, or what a phrase implies.
Year 3 also sits: Maths Paper A · Spelling Paper A · Science Paper A
Sample questions
Try each one first, then open the answer and worked solution under it.
Answer and worked solution
Correct answer: B
Test each part on its own: 'Priya found an empty seat upstairs.' — a complete idea. ✓
'Although the museum was crowded' leaves you waiting for the rest — the word Although turns it into a helper, not a sentence.
Priya found an empty seat upstairs is the main clause.
2. "The council will plant sixty trees along the creek."
What job is the word 'plant' doing in this sentence?
Answer and worked solution
Correct answer: D
Find what the word is sitting next to. Here it follows 'will', and only an action word can follow will.
Test it the other way as well: you cannot put 'the' in front of it here, which is what a noun would allow.
So in this sentence the word is showing an action — planting the trees — even though the same word names a thing in 'the plant on the windowsill'.
Here 'plant' is showing an action, so it is a verb.
3. Choose the word that best completes the sentence:
"The librarian asked us to speak ."
Answer and worked solution
Correct answer: D
Think about the place: a library is for reading and thinking.
A librarian would ask for quiet voices — speak quietly.
quietly fits best.
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Related papers: English Paper B (Year 4) · Maths Paper A (Year 3)
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