Supporting details — SSAT Upper practice questions

On the SSAT Upper Reading Comprehension section, Supporting details items ask a student to find the specific facts, reasons, or examples that explain or back up a claim in the passage. The student must match a statement to the evidence the author actually gives and set that evidence apart from the main idea or from a nearby fact that answers a different question. The exam often frames these as why something occurred or what the passage suggests about a situation. Answer choices mix a precise textual reason with distractors that are true of the passage in general, reverse cause and effect, or rest on outside knowledge rather than the text.

Section: Reading Comprehension 40 questions on the paper
4 practice questions in the app

Sample questions

The School Garden Ledger

The school garden ledger began as a list

of seeds planted in raised beds. By the

end of the year, it included weather

notes, watering schedules, harvest

weights, pest problems, and comments from

students who worked in the garden. The

ledger turned a pleasant project into

something that could be studied.

One entry showed that lettuce planted in

early spring produced well, while lettuce

planted after the first hot week became

bitter and went to seed quickly. Another

note explained that tomatoes near the

brick wall ripened earlier, probably

because the wall held afternoon heat. The

numbers mattered, but so did the

observations around them.

The ledger also changed how students

understood failure. A bed of carrots

produced only thin roots, but the notes

showed that the soil had not been loosened

deeply enough. A poor harvest became

evidence rather than embarrassment. The

next group could improve because the first

group wrote honestly.

By winter, the ledger was less like a

scrapbook and more like a memory the

garden could hand forward. It preserved

choices, conditions, and consequences so

that next year's planting would begin with

evidence instead of guesses. The students

also learned that records are useful only

when they include problems as well as

success. A page that admits dry soil, late

planting, or insect damage can be more

valuable than a page that celebrates only

harvest baskets. Honest notes make future

planning a matter of evidence rather than

guesswork.

Question 1

The passage suggests that the tomatoes near the brick wall ripened earlier because

Athose plants were watered more often than tomatoes farther from the wall.
Bthe soil around them had been loosened more deeply than elsewhere.
Cthey were planted earlier than the tomatoes farther from the wall.
Dthe brick structure retained warmth from the sun.
Ethey had more exposure to cool evening air than to afternoon heat.

Show answer

Answer: D — the brick structure retained warmth from the sun.

The note about tomatoes near the brick wall attributes their earlier ripening to the wall holding afternoon heat, so the brick structure retained warmth from the sun. Watering schedules appear in the ledger but are not given as the cause of earlier ripening. Deeply loosened soil is the missing condition that explains the thin carrots, not the tomatoes. Earlier planting is a plausible ripening factor the passage never assigns to those plants. Greater exposure to cool evening air contradicts the heat-retention explanation.

Practice 4 Supporting details questions in the app

Supporting details — SSAT Upper practice questions

Sample questions

The School Garden Ledger

More SSAT Upper topics

Reading Comprehension