1. Choose the correct verb: Everyone in the choir a copy of the new song.
ICAS English Paper B (Year 4)
Paper B is sat by Year 4 students. Same size as Paper A — 45 questions, 45 minutes, mostly multiple choice — so what changes is not the paper, it is what the questions want.
Last updated: 5 October 2026
What gets harder
The passages get longer and less predictable. More of them are factual or scientific rather than narrative, which removes the story structure children lean on.
More importantly, the balance shifts. On Paper A a good share of questions can be answered by locating the right sentence. On Paper B, more of them need two pieces of information combined, or need the child to decide which of two plausible readings the passage actually supports.
Syntax questions also get more technical: not "is this a noun" but how a word is functioning in this particular sentence. That distinction — usual part of speech versus role in this sentence — is where a lot of marks go, and it is rarely taught explicitly at this age.
Where Year 4 students lose marks
- Two plausible options. The paper is built so that the second-best answer is defensible. Children who pick the first thing that sounds right lose here.
- Word function questions, per above.
- Cloze passages, where the missing word has to fit both the meaning and the grammar, and children often check only one of the two.
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 B
When practising, spend the time on the questions your child got right by guessing as much as on the wrong ones — at this level the gap between "knew it" and "picked it" is where the next twenty marks live.
Full-length timed papers matter here too. Forty-five questions in 45 minutes leaves no room to reread a passage three times, and pacing is a skill of its own.
Common questions
Which year level sits ICAS Paper B?
Year 4. ICAS names its papers by letter rather than by year — Paper A is Year 3 and Paper F is Year 8 — so a Year 4 student sits Paper B.
How long is English Paper B?
45 questions in 45 minutes.
How much of Paper B is reading?
About three quarters. The rest is vocabulary and language questions that stand on their own — and the vocabulary items test words in context rather than definitions.
Year 4 also sits: Maths Paper B · Spelling Paper B · Science Paper B
Sample questions
Try each one first, then open the answer and worked solution under it.
Answer and worked solution
Correct answer: A
'Everyone' means every single person — grammatically it counts as ONE, so it takes a singular verb.
Everyone HAS a copy, even though the choir holds many people.
Everyone in the choir has a copy.
2. "Once the tide went out the kids hunted for crabs."
Where must a comma be placed?
Answer and worked solution
Correct answer: B
The sentence opens with a dependent clause: 'Once the tide went out'.
A fronted clause is sealed off with a comma at its END — right after 'out'.
'Once the tide went out, the kids hunted for crabs.'
The comma goes after 'out', closing the fronted clause.
3. Choose the word that completes the sentence:
"Please pass me scissors on the table over there."
Answer and worked solution
Correct answer: C
scissors is a plural word, and the table is far away ('over there').
Plural + far away → those.
those scissors is correct.
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Related papers: English Paper A (Year 3) · English Paper C (Year 5)
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