What is the passage mainly about?
Read an Informational Passage · ELPAC Grades 3–5 reading. The correct answer, and the reasoning behind it.
A longer factual text, with questions about the main idea, supporting details and vocabulary.
Read the passage. Then answer the questions.
Life Underground
The desert tortoise lives in the Mojave Desert in southern California. Summer days there can be hotter than 110 degrees, and winter nights can drop below freezing. A tortoise cannot sweat or shiver to stay comfortable. So it digs.
With its strong, flat front legs, a tortoise digs a burrow, a tunnel under the ground. Deep inside, the soil stays cool in summer and does not freeze in winter. A tortoise spends most of its life in its burrow. It comes out mainly in spring, when there are fresh plants to eat.
Rain is rare in the desert, so a tortoise must make the most of every storm. After a rain, it drinks from puddles and can store water inside its body for months. Some tortoises even scrape small dips in the dirt that catch rainwater.
Other animals use tortoise burrows, too. Lizards, snakes and even burrowing owls hide in them to escape the heat. That is one reason scientists say that protecting the tortoise helps protect many desert animals.
The question
Choose the best answer.
What is the passage mainly about?
- How hot the Mojave Desert gets in summer
- Why burrowing owls live in the desert
- How the desert tortoise survives heat, cold and dry weatherCorrect answer
- How scientists count desert tortoises
Why “How the desert tortoise survives heat, cold and dry weather” is correct
Main-idea questions ask what the whole passage is about. Each paragraph explains one way the desert tortoise lives through hard conditions: digging a burrow for heat and cold, saving water from rare storms, and sharing its burrow. The heat and the owls are details inside that larger idea.
Why the other answers are wrong
- How hot the Mojave Desert gets in summer — The summer heat is mentioned in the first paragraph to explain the tortoise's problem.
- Why burrowing owls live in the desert — Owls are one of the animals that use tortoise burrows, mentioned in the last paragraph only.
- How scientists count desert tortoises — The passage never says how scientists count tortoises.
Practice more of this
More reading practice for Grades 3–5, or see the ELPAC practice test for grades 3–5. For other grades, see free ELPAC practice tests by grade.
This is an independent study resource. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the California Department of Education or the official ELPAC program. All questions here are original practice material written to match the published task formats.