CCAT Practice Test: Grade 6, 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 12, with the question count Riverside Insights lists for each subtest on the US edition. Each row matches two questions further down.

Those counts add up to 64 Verbal, 52 Quantitative and 60 Nonverbal questions, 176 in all. They are Riverside's figures for Levels 10 and up of CogAT, so they are the same at Level 12 as at Levels 10 and 11. Nelson, which publishes the CCAT in Canada, does not print a count for the CCAT-7 on any page we could read, so treat 176 as close rather than confirmed.

Does a Grade 6 child in Ontario sit the CCAT?

Usually not. No whole-grade screen we found falls in Grade 6. The Toronto District School Board and York Region give the CCAT to every Grade 3 student. Hamilton-Wentworth, Waterloo Catholic, York Catholic and Halton Catholic test in Grade 4, and Huron-Perth Catholic tests in Grades 4 and 7. Our Grade 3 practice test and Grade 4 practice test cover the Grade 3 and Grade 4 sittings, and our Grade 5 practice test covers a child put forward in Grade 5.

So a Grade 6 family is asking a different question: which routes are still open? Here is how the boards we checked answer it.

The Waterloo Catholic row needs a word of caution. The board page gives one sentence. A Waterloo Catholic secondary school's gifted page, timestamped 2018, describes the individual route in more detail: a school-level decision "may or may not include recommendation for a CCAT screen and parents will be informed", and students at or above the 98th percentile in two batteries are identified as gifted. That is one school's page from 2018, so read it as a guide to how the route has worked and ask the school how it works now.

Some gifted programs start or change format in Grade 6, and that is easy to mistake for a Grade 6 test. Toronto Catholic's congregated program starts in Grade 6, but its May 2023 brochure says it screens with the OLSAT8. Hamilton-Wentworth tests every Grade 4 student, and the board's October 2025 information-night summary says that in Grades 6 to 8 students attend about five full-day sessions a year at one of three centres. Halton Catholic group-tests in Grade 4, and its gifted classes run from Grades 5 to 8. At all three boards, a Grade 6 placement rests on an earlier result or a different test. There is no Grade 6 CCAT to prepare for.

One more board has left the CCAT altogether. The Halton District School Board's 2026-2027 special education plan replaces "CCAT-7" with the Naglieri General Ability Tests, given to Grade 4 students in November.

An older document shows another way it has been done. The Upper Canada District School Board's gifted protocol, revised in June 2015, set out a process for Grades 5 to 12: teachers could look for students who reached Level 4 in math or language on the provincial EQAO tests, teachers or parents could nominate, and the school would "administer appropriate level of Canadian Cognitive Abilities Test (CCAT) to selected students." A Grade 6 child fell inside that range. It is a 2015 document, so do not read it as the board's practice today.

If your board is not on this list, ask the school's special education resource teacher three things: whether the board uses the CCAT, in which grade, and whether a Grade 6 child can be nominated or referred.

If your child missed the earlier screening

York Region names this case directly. Its current screening page says: "Students new to YRDSB who did not participate in the Grade 3 Gifted screening may also be screened for possible identification as a Gifted student at a post Grade 3 level." A teacher can bring the student to an In-School Team meeting, which decides whether to request a referral for further assessment by the board's Psychological Services department. The board's procedure, a working document dated March 2015, covers the same case 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". The screening page adds a route that starts with the family: "Parents/guardians of current YRDSB students are also able to have their child’s needs considered for possible Gifted Identification by providing a thorough psychological assessment to their regular home school."

In Durham, the nomination form is open from Grades 4 to 12, and the board says: "If your child passes the gifted assessment, they won't need to write it again." A child can be nominated only twice, so if your child was nominated in Grade 4 or 5, ask the school whether Grade 6 is the right year to use the second one.

What comes in Grade 7

At Huron-Perth Catholic, a Grade 6 child next meets the CCAT in October of Grade 7, when the classroom teacher gives it to the grade. On Riverside's chart, Grade 7 is Level 13/14, a level shared with Grade 8. The nine subtests are the same, but the questions on this page are written for Level 12. They do not prepare a child for that Grade 7 sitting.

Ottawa-Carleton's secondary gifted program is further off, but it is worth knowing about now. Its resource says: "The Secondary Gifted Program does, without exception, require an application for learners not currently in the program". Students already in the board's congregated Grade 8 gifted program do not need to apply. An applicant from outside it sends the most recent psychoeducational assessment, containing either a CCAT-7 or a WISC-V. For a Grade 6 child that decision is two years away.

What "Level 12" means, and why older charts say Level D

Each edition of the CCAT comes in levels matched to a child's grade. Riverside Insights publishes a one-page chart of recommended CogAT levels by grade, for testing in the fall, midyear and spring, and for students of low, average and high ability. In the Grade 6 row, all nine cells read Level 12. Grade 5 reads Level 11 in all nine, and Grade 7 reads 13/14, a level shared with Grade 8. Riverside's overview brochure explains why: "CogAT has separate test levels for Grades K through 6 and banded levels for Grades 7-12". Level 12 is the last level written for a single grade.

That chart belongs to CogAT, and Nelson has no equivalent we could find. Three pieces of evidence tie the current CCAT-7 to CogAT Form 7:

• The Toronto District School Board calls its 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.
• Nelson's own score-profile brochure names Dr. David Lohman, the author of CogAT, as the CCAT author.

You may also find a chart that puts Grade 6 at "Level D". That comes from a Nelson brochure headed "Canadian Cognitive Abilities Test (CCAT) Form K Overview". On the older Form K chart, Grade 6 sat at Level D. Form K is an earlier edition with letter levels, and it is not the test boards describe today.

Nelson does not publish a level chart for the CCAT-7 on any page we could read, and no Ontario board page we found names the Grade 6 level. So Level 12 is the best-supported answer, but it is not confirmed. Our full guide to the CCAT covers the test across all grades.

How long it takes

Riverside's help page on testing time is direct: "Levels 9-17/18 are given 10 minutes per subtest for a total testing time of 90 minutes." Nine subtests at 10 minutes each is the whole test. Durham says its nominated students are tested in a group, and that the school's special education resource teacher tells families the assessment date between mid-October and mid-November. Results go home from mid-January to early February.

At Level 12 the verbal and quantitative questions are text. Riverside's overview says items from Level 9 (Grade 3) and above in those two batteries "are text-based". So a Grade 6 child reads every verbal and math question for themselves.

Should a Grade 6 child practise for the CCAT?

This page exists to help with format. It does not claim to raise a score.

The test is built so that practice should not matter much. Riverside says its questions show "how well students use reasoning skills they have developed to solve problems they have not been directly taught." Drilling the same puzzle types over and over teaches the puzzles, and that tells the board less about your child.

Here is what the boards say about preparation:

• Toronto District School Board (Grade 3): "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." The rule sits on the page about the Grade 3 screen, but the reason it gives is about the test itself, not the grade. If your child is at the TDSB and being considered for testing, ask the school before you use this page.
• York Catholic (a Grade 4 school letter, October 2023): "Your child cannot study for this activity, but making sure that your child is well-rested is the best preparation."
• Durham: its only line about practice effects is about a private practitioner repeating a test that board staff already gave. In that case it wants "a waiting period of at least nine-months to minimize practice effects and to ensure validity of results." It matters if a family is weighing a private assessment after a board test.
• Durham's nomination process, York Region, Waterloo Catholic, Ottawa-Carleton and Huron-Perth Catholic: we found no stated position on preparing for the CCAT. Ask the school before you start.

So 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.

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-preparation item bank. The real test is built around problems children have not seen, so a copied item would defeat the point.

The real nonverbal questions are pictures. Ours describe the pictures in words, which makes them a little harder to read than the real thing. It is fine to sketch them on paper first, and for the two paper-folding questions, to fold a real sheet.

The math stays inside the Grade 6 Ontario curriculum, and every number in the questions is a whole number. Questions 7 and 9 use percents of whole numbers (15 percent and 50 percent, both on the curriculum's list for mental math). Question 8 doubles a number and adds 1, and the curriculum includes whole-number problems "requiring multiple steps or multiple operations". Questions 9 and 10 are equations, and Grade 6 asks students to "solve equations that involve multiple terms and whole numbers in various contexts, and verify solutions". Question 10 can be checked with the divisibility rule for 3. Questions 11 and 12 ask for the next number in a shrinking and a growing pattern, and the curriculum asks students to "identify missing elements in repeating, growing, and shrinking patterns". Every correct answer is between 1 and 100.

Answer all 18 before you look at the key.

Verbal

Question 1 (Verbal Analogies). ravenous → hungry. exhausted → ?

• A. asleep
• B. lazy
• C. tired
• D. energetic
• E. bored

Question 2 (Verbal Analogies). pedal → bicycle. oar → ?

• A. water
• B. paddle
• C. sailboat
• D. rowboat
• E. swim

Question 3 (Sentence Completion). The new rule was meant to last only a week, but it stayed in place for so long that most students began to think of it as ______.

• A. unfair
• B. permanent
• C. brief
• D. strict
• E. forgotten

Question 4 (Sentence Completion). Our quietest classmate almost never spoke in class, so everyone was ______ when he offered to give the first presentation.

• A. annoyed
• B. certain
• C. bored
• D. late
• E. surprised

Question 5 (Verbal Classification). whisper, murmur, mutter. Which word belongs with these three?

• A. shout
• B. listen
• C. mumble
• D. sing
• E. silent

Question 6 (Verbal Classification). copper, iron, silver. Which word belongs with these three?

• A. wood
• B. gold
• C. coin
• D. magnet
• E. rust

Quantitative

Question 7 (Number Analogies). 20 → 3. 60 → 9. 40 → ?

• A. 4
• B. 6
• C. 7
• D. 9
• E. 12

Question 8 (Number Analogies). 4 → 9. 7 → 15. 10 → ?

• A. 18
• B. 20
• C. 21
• D. 30
• E. 31

Question 9 (Number Puzzles). 50% of ? = 36 + 9

• A. 45
• B. 54
• C. 72
• D. 81
• E. 90

Question 10 (Number Puzzles). If ■ + ■ + ■ = 87 and ● = ■ − 20, what is ●?

• A. 9
• B. 29
• C. 49
• D. 67
• E. 107

Question 11 (Number Series). 50, 41, 33, 26, 20, ?

• A. 14
• B. 15
• C. 16
• D. 20
• E. 25

Question 12 (Number Series). 2, 5, 7, 12, 19, 31, ?

• A. 43
• B. 45
• C. 50
• D. 52
• E. 62

Nonverbal

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

• A. three small black stars in a row
• B. one large white star
• C. three small white triangles in a row
• D. three small white stars in a row
• E. two small white stars side by side

Question 14 (Figure Matrices). The top row of a grid shows a white circle with a black dot at its centre, then a black circle with a white dot at its centre. The bottom row shows a white square with a small black triangle inside it, then an empty box. Which figure goes in the empty box?

• A. a black square with a small white triangle inside it
• B. a white square with a small black triangle inside it
• C. a black triangle with a small white square inside it
• D. a black square with a small black triangle inside it
• E. a white circle with a black dot at its centre

Question 15 (Paper Folding). A square sheet of paper is folded in half, left edge onto right edge. It is then folded in half again, top edge down onto bottom edge, so it is now a small square a quarter of the size of the sheet. One hole is punched through all the layers, close to the corner of the small square where the two folds meet. The sheet is opened out flat. Where are the holes?

• A. four holes, one near each corner of the sheet
• B. two holes, close to the centre of the sheet
• C. four holes, close together around the centre of the sheet
• D. one hole, at the centre of the sheet
• E. four holes in a row across the middle of the sheet

Question 16 (Paper Folding). A square sheet of paper is folded in half, left edge onto right edge. It is folded in half again the same way, left edge onto right edge, so it is now a tall strip a quarter of the width of the sheet. One hole is punched through all the layers, near the top of the strip and halfway across it. The sheet is opened out flat. Where are the holes?

• A. four holes in a column down the middle of the sheet
• B. four holes in a row near the top edge, evenly spaced across the sheet
• C. two holes near the top edge, one near each side
• D. four holes, one near each corner of the sheet
• E. one hole, near the top right corner

Question 17 (Figure Classification). Three figures belong together: a square with a dot at each of its corners, a triangle with a dot at each of its corners, and a pentagon with a dot at each of its corners. Which figure belongs with them?

• A. a triangle with a dot at the middle of each side
• B. a square with dots at three of its corners
• C. a hexagon with a dot at each of its corners
• D. a circle with one dot on its edge
• E. a hexagon with a dot at its centre

Question 18 (Figure Classification). Three figures belong together: a box with 2 black dots and 1 white dot, a box with 6 black dots and 3 white dots, and a box with 4 black dots and 2 white dots. Which figure belongs with them?

• A. a box with 5 black dots and 10 white dots
• B. a box with 8 black dots and 2 white dots
• C. a box with 6 black dots and 4 white dots
• D. a box with 10 black dots and 5 white dots
• E. a box with 3 black dots and 3 white dots

Answer key, with the working

The working

Question 1. Ravenous means extremely hungry, so the pair goes from the strong word to the ordinary one. Exhausted means extremely tired. Asleep is a state you might reach when exhausted, and it is not the feeling itself. Lazy describes someone who does not want to work, bored is a different feeling, and energetic is the opposite.

Question 2. You push a pedal to move a bicycle, and you pull an oar to move a rowboat. A sailboat is moved by the wind. A paddle is a tool like the oar, so it cannot be the craft the oar moves. Water is what the boat moves through, and swimming moves a person.

Question 3. The word "but" signals a turn: the rule was meant to be short, and it ended up lasting. Students who see a rule stay in place for a long time start to treat it as permanent. Brief points the wrong way, forgotten cannot be right for a rule students are thinking about, and nothing in the sentence says the rule was unfair or strict.

Question 4. A classmate who almost never speaks offering to go first is the opposite of what everyone expects, so they were surprised. Certain points the wrong way, and nothing in the sentence suggests anyone was annoyed, bored or late.

Question 5. To whisper, murmur and mutter are all ways of speaking quietly, so they are hard to hear. To mumble is another. Shouting is loud, singing can be loud or quiet, listening is not speaking at all, and silent means making no sound.

Question 6. Copper, iron and silver are all metals, and so is gold. A coin and a magnet are objects that can be made of metal, but neither is a metal itself. Rust forms on iron and is not a metal, and wood is not a metal.

Question 7. 20 becomes 3 and 60 becomes 9. Taking 15 percent fits both: 10 percent of 20 is 2 and 5 percent is 1, so 15 percent is 3; 10 percent of 60 is 6 and 5 percent is 3, so 15 percent is 9. For 40, 10 percent is 4 and 5 percent is 2, so the answer is 6. Check by a second route: 40 is twice 20, so its answer is twice 3, which is 6. A takes 10 percent instead of 15, and D copies the answer for 60.

Question 8. 4 becomes 9 and 7 becomes 15. Doubling and adding 1 fits both: 4 × 2 + 1 = 9 and 7 × 2 + 1 = 15. So 10 becomes 10 × 2 + 1 = 21. Check by a second route: each starting number is 3 more than the one before, and each answer is 6 more, so the answer for 10 is 15 + 6 = 21. A adds only 3 to 15, B doubles and forgets to add 1, D triples, and E triples and adds 1.

Question 9. Do the side you can finish first: 36 + 9 = 45. So half of the missing number is 45, and the missing number is 90. Check: 50 percent of 90 is 45, and 36 + 9 = 45. A is the trap: 45 is only half of the answer.

Question 10. Three equal numbers make 87, so each is 87 ÷ 3 = 29. The divisibility rule for 3 says this will work out evenly, because 8 + 7 = 15, and 15 can be divided by 3. Then ● = 29 − 20 = 9. Check: 29 + 29 + 29 = 87, and 9 + 20 = 29. B stops at ■, D takes 20 from 87 instead of from 29, and E adds 20.

Question 11. The gaps shrink by 1 each time: 50 − 41 = 9, 41 − 33 = 8, 33 − 26 = 7 and 26 − 20 = 6. The next gap is 5, and 20 − 5 = 15. Check by counting from the start: the five gaps are 9, 8, 7, 6 and 5, which add up to 35, and 50 − 35 = 15. This is a shrinking pattern, which the Grade 6 curriculum names alongside growing and repeating ones. A takes away the last gap of 6 again, C takes away only 4, D copies the last number, and E adds 5 instead of taking it away.

Question 12. Each number is the sum of the two before it: 2 + 5 = 7, 5 + 7 = 12, 7 + 12 = 19 and 12 + 19 = 31. So the next is 19 + 31 = 50. Check by the gaps: they run 3, 2, 5, 7, 12, and from the second gap on, each gap is the number two places back in the series. The next gap is 19, and 31 + 19 = 50. A repeats the last gap of 12, and E doubles 31.

Question 13. Across the top row, one triangle becomes three triangles in a row, and the shape and colour stay the same. So one small white star becomes three small white stars in a row. Check down the columns too: the left column changes a black triangle into a white star, and doing the same to three black triangles gives three white stars. A keeps the wrong colour, B changes the size instead of the number, C keeps the wrong shape, and E has two stars instead of three.

Question 14. Across the top row, the circle and the dot keep their shapes, and their colours swap: white becomes black, and black becomes white. So the white square with a black triangle inside becomes a black square with a white triangle inside. Check down the columns: the left column turns the circle into a square and the dot into a triangle, and doing the same to the black circle with a white dot also gives a black square with a white triangle inside. Nothing in this question turns or flips, so there is only one answer. B copies the box on the left, C swaps which shape is inside, D swaps only one colour, and E copies the top row.

Question 15. The first fold runs down the middle of the sheet, from top to bottom. The second runs across the middle, from side to side. The corner of the small square where the two folds meet is the centre of the sheet. A hole punched there goes through all four layers, and when the sheet opens, each fold mirrors it, so four holes sit close together around the centre, one in each quarter of the sheet. A is what you would get from a punch near the opposite corner of the small square, where the open edges meet.

Question 16. The first fold runs down the middle of the sheet. The second fold takes that folded edge over to the open edges, so the strip has four layers, each a quarter of the width of the sheet. A punch near the top of the strip goes through all four, and when the sheet opens, the four holes sit in a row near the top edge, one in each quarter of the width. They are evenly spaced, a quarter of the width apart. Folding a real sheet is the quickest way to check.

Question 17. Each figure has exactly one dot at every corner, whatever its number of sides. A hexagon with a dot at each of its corners follows the same rule. A puts the dots on the sides instead of the corners, B misses a corner, D is a circle, which has no corners, and E has one dot in the middle.

Question 18. In each box, there are twice as many black dots as white dots: 2 and 1, 6 and 3, 4 and 2. A box with 10 black dots and 5 white dots follows the same rule. A has the colours the wrong way round, B has four times as many black dots as white, C has 6 and 4, and E has the same number of each.

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, 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. A child who could not work out what a paper-folding question was asking is the child who will lose time on it in the real test. A child who understood it and made a slip is fine.

If one battery felt much harder than the others, that is worth knowing, because boards read the batteries separately. Ottawa-Carleton's criteria, for example, look for two of the three scales at the 98th percentile and the third at the 90th or above. Nelson's CCAT score profile gives each child a shape code. "A" means the three battery scores are roughly similar. "B" means one score is substantially different, above or below the other two. "C" means "two of the battery scores are quite different (one strength and one weakness)", and "E" is a more extreme version of C that Nelson calls uncommon.

If the hard part was the reading or the math, that is worth knowing for school in general. Grade 6 is also the year of the provincial EQAO test, and our EQAO Grade 6 practice test is a better place to practise reading and math than this page.

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

When the report comes home

CCAT results come back as a few kinds of score, and they are easy to mix up.

• Percentile rank. Riverside defines it as the percentage of students in the same age or grade group "whose scores fall at or below the score obtained by a particular student." A percentile rank of 90 means 90 percent of that group scored the same or lower. It is not a mark out of 100.
• Stanine. "The stanine scale is a normalized standard score scale consisting of nine broad levels designated by the numbers 1 through 9." Nelson's CCAT score profile is built on a stanine for overall ability.
• Standard Age Score. On CogAT, "The SAS has a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 16."

Be careful with the number 130. Huron-Perth Catholic recommends students who "score 130+ (composite) on the CCAT" for identification. On CogAT's table, a standard age score of 130 is the 97th percentile, and the 98th starts at 132. Hamilton-Wentworth's "standard score 130+" describes a different test, the WISC-V, on a different scale. So do not read a CCAT score of 130 as the 98th percentile. Nelson's Canadian conversion table was not available for us to check, so treat CogAT's table as a guide.

The cut-offs differ by board. Durham offers an individual assessment to children who score between the 95th and 97th percentile on its group test. Halton Catholic moves children at the 95th percentile or higher to a second stage. Hamilton-Wentworth says some children qualify on the CCAT 7 alone, "when both verbal and non-verbal scores are at the 98th percentile."

If your child moves on, the next step is usually an individual test arranged by the board, and then an Identification, Placement and Review Committee (IPRC), which decides whether your child is identified as gifted and where they are placed. An Individual Education Plan (IEP) follows from that decision.