1. A grower plants seedlings in two plots. Plot 1 gets shade cloth and a weekly feed. Plot 2 gets full sun and no feed. Plot 1 grows taller. What can the grower fairly conclude?
ICAS Science Paper D (Year 6)
Paper D is sat by Year 6 students. Forty questions in 55 minutes, four options each — same size as Paper C, with the reasoning turned up.
Last updated: 5 October 2026
What separates results at this level
Whether a conclusion is supported, not whether it is correct.
By Year 6 most students know a lot of true things about science. Paper D exploits that: the wrong options are often statements that are perfectly true in general but are not demonstrated by the experiment in front of them.
A student who answers from knowledge picks the true statement. A student who answers from the data picks the supported one. The paper is built to distinguish the two, and this is where most of the marks move.
What Year 6 content provides
Growth and environmental factors, reversible and irreversible change, electrical circuits and energy transfer, and sudden versus gradual changes to the Earth's surface. Once again these are contexts — the question underneath is almost always interpret, predict or evaluate.
Where Year 6 students lose marks
- True-but-unsupported options, per above
- Two-variable data, where the effect of one is only visible if you hold the other steady in your head
- Anomalous results. A table with one reading that does not fit, and a question about what it means. Many students ignore it; the paper is asking about it precisely because it is odd.
- Prediction questions that need a mechanism, not a pattern — "what would happen if we doubled it" where the relationship is not linear
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 D
When reviewing a wrong answer, do not ask "is this true". Ask "which line of the table shows this". If your child cannot point at it, the option was not supported — and that is the whole discipline Paper D is testing.
Common questions
Which year level sits ICAS Paper D?
Year 6. ICAS names its papers by letter rather than by year — Paper A is Year 3 and Paper F is Year 8 — so a Year 6 student sits Paper D.
How long is Science Paper D?
40 questions in 55 minutes.
How should we review a wrong answer on Paper D?
Ask which line of the table or graph supports it, rather than whether it is true in general. An option that is true but unsupported is a trap at this level.
Year 6 also sits: Maths Paper D · English Paper D · Spelling Paper D
Sample questions
Try each one first, then open the answer and worked solution under it.
Answer and worked solution
Correct answer: D
Count what differs between the plots: the light differs and the feeding differs, so two things changed at once.
The result shows the whole package on plot 1 beat the whole package on plot 2.
Because the two changes travelled together, nothing in this design can say which of them did the work, or whether both did.
The combination on plot 1 won, but the design cannot separate the shade from the feed.
2. A student counts the insects on one leaf of a bush and reports that number as the count for the whole bush. Three classmates count different leaves and get quite different numbers. What is the best improvement?
Answer and worked solution
Correct answer: D
The classmates differ because leaves differ, not because anyone counted badly.
A single leaf therefore cannot stand for the bush, however carefully it is counted.
Counting several leaves from around the bush and averaging lets the differences between leaves cancel out.
Several leaves from around the bush should be counted and averaged.
3. In a pond, tadpoles eat both pond weed and algae. Small fish eat tadpoles, and herons eat the small fish. A cold spell kills off nearly all the algae. What does this system predict for the tadpoles?
Answer and worked solution
Correct answer: A
Find every arrow that brings food to the tadpoles: pond weed and algae both do.
Losing the algae closes one of those two routes, but the pond weed route stays open.
So the tadpoles are worse off than before yet still able to feed, which is why a second food source matters in a system like this.
Pond weed is a second food source, so the tadpoles can still feed without the algae.
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Related papers: Science Paper C (Year 5) · Science Paper E (Year 7)
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