CCAT Practice Test: Grade 3, With a Worked Answer Key

The nine subtests at a glance

The CCAT has three parts, called batteries. Each battery has three subtests. This table sets out the test as CogAT Form 7 structures it at Level 9, and each row matches two questions further down.

These are the subtest names Riverside Insights uses for Levels 9 and up of CogAT Form 7, the US test. Board and publisher documents in Ontario tie the CCAT-7 to that edition.

What "Level 9" means, and why older charts say Level A

Each edition of the CCAT comes in levels matched to a child's grade. Riverside's CogAT overview brochure names the Grade 3 level directly: "Items from Level 9 (Grade 3) and above in the Verbal and Quantitative batteries are text-based."

That makes Grade 3 a step up. At Level 9 the verbal and quantitative questions are printed words and numbers, so reading is part of the test.

You may also find a Nelson chart that puts Grade 3 at "Level A". That chart comes from a brochure headed "Canadian Cognitive Abilities Test (CCAT) Form K Overview". Form K is an earlier edition with letter levels, and it never mentions the seventh edition.

Three pieces of evidence tie the current CCAT-7 to CogAT Form 7:

• The Toronto District School Board calls its Grade 3 test "the Cognitive Abilities Test, Seventh Edition (CCAT-7)".
• Halton Catholic's special education plan writes "CCAT-7/CogAT" and cites the Form 7 planning guide by David F. Lohman.
• Nelson's own score-profile brochure names Dr. David Lohman as the CCAT author and cites the CogAT Form 7 guides.

Nelson does not publish a CCAT-7 level chart on any page we could read. Level 9 is the best reading of the evidence. If your child's school uses a different name, go with the school.

How long it takes

Riverside's timing table for "LEVELS 9-17/18 (GRADE 3 AND UP)" lists each of the nine subtests at 10 minutes. That comes to about 90 minutes of working time, in three batteries of about 30 minutes each. Nelson's older Form K brochure gives the same total: "CCAT requires 90 minutes over three sessions".

The boards that describe the day give it as a group test. The Toronto District School Board's 2016 parent information calls it "a paper/pencil group test administered by classroom teachers", and Durham says "Testing is done in a group setting." Other boards may run it differently, so ask the school how and where your child will sit it.

You may see a question count quoted online, often around 170. We could not confirm a total for Level 9. Riverside's norms guide gives 52 items for the Quantitative battery and 56 for the Nonverbal battery at Level 9. It gives no Verbal count for Level 9 in anything we read.

Which Ontario boards give the CCAT in Grade 3

Grade 3 is the screening year at Toronto public and York Region, and at Grand Erie going by its 2023-24 plan. Here is what each board's own pages say.

Toronto District School Board. "The Cognitive Abilities Test, Seventh Edition (CCAT-7) is administered as part of the universal screening process for all Grade 3 students." The board's 2016 parent information says it is "Administered in the early fall of Grade 3."

York Region District School Board. The board's screening page says the test goes "to all grade three students" and that screening "takes place each year in late November to early December". York Region's two pages count the steps differently. The screening page calls it "a two-stage process". Board procedure PRO-358 says "The gifted screening and identification process consists of three stages", because it counts the committee decision as a third stage.

Grand Erie District School Board. Its special education plan for 2023-24 says: "Canadian Cognitive Abilities Test (CCAT 7) is administered in grade 3 to all students to develop a more comprehensive profile of the students."

Durham District School Board. Durham tests by nomination, and "Parents and educators can nominate students to participate in the Canadian Cognitive Abilities Test (CCAT)," the board's page says. Grade 3 is the easy year, because the form comes home on its own: "We send out nomination forms with all Grade 3 students each year in early September," in the board's words. An older child is different, because families of students in Grades 4 to 12 "can request a nomination form from their school's Special Education Resource Teacher (SERT) in early September," so the form does not come home on its own, though a teacher can still nominate. After a nomination, the page says, "the SERT will notify you of your child's assessment date" at some point between mid-October and mid-November. There is also a limit worth knowing before you use a nomination: "You can only nominate your child for assessment a maximum of 2 times with the DDSB."

A Grade 3 board that uses a different test

Simcoe County District School Board offers screening to every Grade 3 child, but not with the CCAT. Its procedure says "All students in Grade 3 are provided the opportunity to participate" in its "universal Otis-Lennon School Ability Test (OLSAT) screening process", and the test is given only after a parent or guardian gives written consent. The questions on this page are in the CCAT format, so they are not a match for a Simcoe County child's test.

Boards that test in Grade 4 instead

Several boards give the CCAT a year later. Our Grade 4 CCAT practice test covers those boards, with 18 more questions at the Grade 4 level. Our full guide to the CCAT has the board-by-board picture.

We searched for other boards that screen in Grade 3 and could not confirm any from a current board page. That does not mean they do not. Ask your school which test it uses and in which grade.

Should a Grade 3 child practise for the CCAT?

This page exists to show the format. It does not claim to raise a score.

The Toronto District School Board's position is the strictest we found, and it is worth quoting in full: "The CCAT-7 and other measures of intellectual ability are designed to provide students with exposure to novel tasks. As such, no advance preparation or practice is permitted. Any evidence of prior exposure, preparation, or practice will render the results invalid and may compromise the integrity of the screening process."

That is unambiguous. At the TDSB, working through these questions with your child can invalidate the result. If your child is at the TDSB, read the questions yourself so you know what the test looks like, and leave it there.

The other Grade 3 boards say less:

• York Region and Grand Erie: we found no stated position on the pages we read. Ask your school before you do anything with your child.
• Durham: its only line on practice effects is about a private practitioner repeating a test that board staff have already given. In that case Durham wants "a waiting period of at least nine-months to minimize practice effects and to ensure validity of results". It is not a rule about the first sitting.
• Simcoe County: it gives children "the opportunity to participate in a practice test prior to the actual test", but that is for the OLSAT, its own test.

Where your board has no rule, the sensible way to use this page is once, untimed, at the kitchen table. Your child sees each format, you both look at the working, and you put it away. Do not time it and do not repeat it. Practising the same kinds of puzzle over and over teaches the puzzle, and that tells the board less about your child.

The 18 practice questions

Every question below is original and was written for this article. None is reprinted from a CCAT test booklet, a Nelson or Riverside publication, or a test-prep item bank.

The real nonverbal questions are pictures. Ours describe the pictures in words. That makes them a little harder to read than the real thing, so it is fine to sketch them on paper first.

All the math stays inside the Grade 3 Ontario curriculum. The 2020 curriculum asks Grade 3 students to work with whole numbers "up to and including 1000" and to "recall and demonstrate multiplication facts of 2, 5, and 10, and related division facts". No number in the 18 questions or their options goes above 80, and every correct answer is 18 or less.

Answer all 18 before you look at the key.

Verbal

Question 1 (Verbal Analogies). bird → nest. bee → ?

• A. honey
• B. hive
• C. flower
• D. buzz
• E. wing

Question 2 (Verbal Analogies). cold → hot. up → ?

• A. high
• B. top
• C. sky
• D. down
• E. over

Question 3 (Sentence Completion). Maya put on her boots because the path was ____.

• A. muddy
• B. sunny
• C. short
• D. quiet
• E. new

Question 4 (Sentence Completion). The plant's leaves were dry and drooping, so Leo gave it ____.

• A. a blanket
• B. some seeds
• C. more leaves
• D. a song
• E. some water

Question 5 (Verbal Classification). apple, banana, grape. Which word belongs with them?

• A. carrot
• B. bread
• C. pear
• D. milk
• E. potato

Question 6 (Verbal Classification). hammer, saw, drill. Which word belongs with them?

• A. screwdriver
• B. nail
• C. wood
• D. box
• E. paint

Quantitative

Question 7 (Number Analogies). 2 → 12. 5 → 15. 8 → ?

• A. 16
• B. 13
• C. 20
• D. 18
• E. 80

Question 8 (Number Analogies). 3 → 6. 4 → 8. 6 → ?

• A. 8
• B. 12
• C. 10
• D. 9
• E. 18

Question 9 (Number Puzzles). ? + 4 = 10 + 2. Which number makes both sides equal?

• A. 6
• B. 12
• C. 14
• D. 16
• E. 8

Question 10 (Number Puzzles). 20 − ? = 5 + 5. Which number makes both sides equal?

• A. 5
• B. 15
• C. 10
• D. 20
• E. 25

Question 11 (Number Series). 3, 6, 9, 12, ?

• A. 15
• B. 13
• C. 14
• D. 16
• E. 18

Question 12 (Number Series). 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, ?

• A. 9
• B. 11
• C. 12
• D. 10
• E. 13

Nonverbal

Question 13 (Figure Matrices). The top row of a grid shows one triangle, then two triangles. The bottom row shows one star, then an empty box. Which picture goes in the empty box?

• A. one star
• B. two triangles
• C. three stars
• D. one triangle
• E. two stars

Question 14 (Figure Matrices). The grid has two rows of three boxes. The top row shows an arrow pointing up, then an arrow pointing right, then an arrow pointing down. The bottom row shows an arrow pointing left, then an arrow pointing up, then an empty box. Which arrow goes in the empty box?

• A. an arrow pointing down
• B. an arrow pointing right
• C. an arrow pointing left
• D. an arrow pointing up
• E. two arrows pointing right

Question 15 (Paper Folding). A square sheet of paper is folded in half, top edge down onto the bottom edge. One hole is punched through both layers, right in the middle of the folded paper. The sheet is opened out flat. Where are the holes?

• A. one hole, in the centre of the sheet
• B. two holes side by side, near the middle
• C. two holes, one above the other, one in the top half and one in the bottom half
• D. four holes, one near each corner
• E. two holes, both near the left edge

Question 16 (Paper Folding). A square sheet is folded in half, left side over onto the right side. One hole is punched through both layers, halfway down and close to the fold, but not on it. The sheet is opened out flat. Where are the holes?

• A. two holes side by side, close together near the middle of the sheet
• B. one hole, in the middle of the sheet
• C. two holes, one near the left edge and one near the right edge
• D. two holes, one above the other
• E. four holes

Question 17 (Figure Classification). Three shapes belong together: a square, a long thin rectangle and a diamond. Which shape belongs with them?

• A. a triangle
• B. a circle
• C. a shape with five sides
• D. a shape with four sides of different lengths
• E. a star

Question 18 (Figure Classification). Three shapes belong together: a black circle, a black square and a black triangle. Which shape belongs with them?

• A. a white star
• B. a white circle
• C. a striped square
• D. a striped triangle
• E. a black star

Answer key, with the working

The working

Question 1. A bird builds a nest to live in, and bees build a hive. Honey and flower are both things you might link to a bee, which is the trap. The question asks for the home.

Question 2. Hot is the opposite of cold, so the answer is the opposite of up. High, top and sky all go with up rather than against it.

Question 3. Boots are for a path that is wet or dirty. Sunny, short, quiet and new give no reason to change your shoes.

Question 4. Dry, drooping leaves mean the plant is thirsty, so it needs some water. Seeds and leaves are parts of a plant, and a thirsty plant does not need more of them. A blanket and a song do nothing for it.

Question 5. Apple, banana and grape are all fruit, and so is a pear. Carrot and potato are vegetables. Bread and milk are food, but not fruit.

Question 6. Hammer, saw and drill are tools, and a screwdriver is a tool too. A nail and wood are things you use tools on. That difference is the whole question.

Question 7. 2 becomes 12 and 5 becomes 15, so the rule is add 10. 8 + 10 = 18. The answer 80 is a trap for a child who multiplies by 10 without checking the first pair.

Question 8. 3 becomes 6 and 4 becomes 8, so each number doubles. Double 6 is 12. A child who adds 3 gets the first pair right, but 4 + 3 is 7, and the second pair needs 8, so that rule fails.

Question 9. Work out the right side first: 10 + 2 = 12. So the left side must also make 12. 8 + 4 = 12, so the missing number is 8. A child who picks 12 has found the total. The question asks for the missing number.

Question 10. The right side is 5 + 5 = 10. So 20 take away the missing number must leave 10. 20 − 10 = 10, so the answer is 10.

Question 11. Each number is 3 more than the one before: 3, 6, 9, 12. The next is 12 + 3 = 15.

Question 12. The steps go add 1, add 2, add 1, add 2: 1 to 2, 2 to 4, 4 to 5, 5 to 7, 7 to 8. The next step is add 2, so 8 + 2 = 10. A child who sees only "add 1" picks 9.

Question 13. In the top row, one triangle becomes two triangles. The shape stays the same and the number goes from one to two. So one star becomes two stars.

Question 14. In the top row, the arrow turns a quarter turn clockwise, like the hand of a clock, at each step: up, then right, then down. The bottom row follows the same rule. Left turns to up, and one more quarter turn takes up round to right. A flip cannot explain the top row, because flipping the right-pointing arrow the same way again would send it back to up, not on to down.

Question 15. Folding the top down onto the bottom stacks the two halves. The punch goes through both, so there are two holes. When the sheet opens, the fold is a line across the middle, and the two holes sit one on each side of it: one in the middle of the top half and one in the middle of the bottom half.

Question 16. Folding left over right puts the fold down the middle of the sheet. The hole is punched close to the fold, but not on it, through both layers. When the sheet opens, the two holes sit either side of the middle line, close together. A child who picks one hole has forgotten there were two layers.

Question 17. A square, a rectangle and a diamond each have four sides. So does a shape with four sides of different lengths, even though it looks less tidy. The triangle, circle, five-sided shape and star all have a different number of sides.

Question 18. The three shapes are all different, but they are all black. A black star follows the same rule. The white circle, the striped square and the striped triangle are the traps, because each of those shapes is already in the group, but the colour is wrong.

What to do with your child's answers

Eighteen questions cannot give a score. The real test compares your child with a large group of children the same age, and a percentile only means something against that group. So do not count up the right answers and read anything into the total.

What the answers can tell you is simpler. Look for a format your child did not understand at all, rather than one they got wrong. In Grade 3 it can be a reading problem rather than a reasoning one, because Level 9 is where the verbal and quantitative questions become text. A child who could not follow what a paper-folding question was asking is different from a child who understood it and made a slip.

If reading the questions was the hard part, that is worth knowing for school generally, and our EQAO Grade 3 practice test is a better place to practise reading than this page. The EQAO is a separate provincial test of reading, writing and math.

After that, stop. You have done what a practice page can do.

When the report comes home

The next step depends on the board.

• Toronto District School Board: we found no single CCAT cutoff on any TDSB page we read. The board's 2016 parent information set out a chain of steps: "Students meeting criteria on CCAT will be considered through In-School Team (IST) for the next step in the process. This will include a Gifted Rating Scale completion by classroom teachers." A child who also met the rating-scale criterion could then be "considered for an enhanced IEP or individual intelligence testing", using the WISC-V. That 2016 document recommended a committee review for students "who obtain a score at or above the 98th percentile on the GAI of the WISC-V and who meet the GRS criterion". Ask the school whether the steps are the same this year.
• York Region District School Board: the CCAT is Stage I. PRO-358 describes Stage II as an "Individual psychological assessment" and Stage III as a "Presentation to the Identification, Placement and Review Committee (IPRC)".
• Durham District School Board: the page names the band that leads to a second, individual test: "If your child scores within the 95 th and 97 th percentile in the group assessment, they can take an individual assessment with a member of DDSB's psychological services." It does not say what happens to a score above the 97th percentile, so ask the school's special education resource teacher.

The Identification, Placement and Review Committee decides whether your child is identified as gifted and where they are placed. Our guide to the Individual Education Plan (IEP) explains what can come after it.

If your child missed the Grade 3 screening

York Region states the clearest route. PRO-358 describes "Post Grade 3 screening and identification", for students referred by the In-School Team, including "those who enrolled in the Board after the Grade 3 screening and identification process was completed". In Durham, a family can ask the school's special education resource teacher for a nomination form in early September of any grade from 4 to 12, within the board's limit of two nominations. At other boards, ask the school's special education resource teacher.