EQAO Grade 3 Practice Test: Reading, Writing and Math Questions With Answers

The short answer

What this test is, and what it is not

The full name matters, because it explains something parents get wrong. It is the Primary Division assessment, and it covers Grades 1 to 3, not Grade 3 alone. EQAO's wording is that it "tests the reading, writing and mathematics knowledge and skills students are expected to have learned by the end of Grade 3."

You cannot revise three years of school in a fortnight, and you are not meant to.

There is no pass mark. EQAO reports "level of achievement (Levels 1 to 4)", and the Ministry of Education "sets the provincial standard at Level 3". The only EQAO test with a pass is the Grade 10 literacy test, because that one is a graduation requirement. Grade 3 has nothing riding on it.

What is it for, then? EQAO quotes Ontario's own assessment policy: large-scale assessments are "designed primarily to provide snapshots of the strengths and weaknesses of education systems." The instrument is pointed at the school system. Your child is one data point in it.

That is worth saying out loud to an eight-year-old who is nervous.

Four traps in the practice material online

Checked on 20 August 2026, all on the first two pages of Google for this exact search.

A Grade 9 practice test ranks for this Grade 3 search. One result sitting on page two opens with "Welcome to the Online Grade 9 Practice Test", and its web address contains the Grade 9 course code. A parent who clicks it hands an eight-year-old the de-streamed Grade 9 maths course.

One page tells parents that Level 3 is below standard. It says, in its own words, that "Level 3 and Level 2 indicate that your child is near or below provincial standards." That is wrong. Level 3 is the standard, set by the Ministry. The same page elsewhere says Level 3 means a student is on track, so it contradicts itself. If you have read that a Level 3 is a problem, it is not.

Pages promise to help your child "pass". One ranking article is titled how to pass Grade 3 EQAO math. There is nothing to pass.

Board pages are still handing out 2023 material. One school board page ranking on the first page offers sample questions from 2023. EQAO's newest released set is November 2025.

There is also a real gap. EQAO publishes released questions for math only. All three of its Grade 3 sets, from November 2025, January 2025 and November 2023, are math. There is no official released set for reading or writing, which is why searches for a Grade 3 reading practice PDF lead to strangers' uploads. That gap is why this page includes reading and writing, and not just numbers.

How to use this with an eight-year-old

Do this in one sitting of twenty minutes, or split it across three evenings. Not longer.

Sit beside them. Read the instructions aloud if they want. In the real assessment your child can have the text read to them by the computer, along with zoom, high contrast and a highlighter, so reading aloud at home is not cheating.

Do not time it. Do not add up a score. There is no score here to add up.

The one thing worth doing afterwards is looking at which kind of question went wrong, which the answer key labels for you. That is the only useful output of an exercise like this.

And when you are done, do EQAO's own free sample test. It runs on the real platform, so your child meets the actual buttons. It also shows the correct answer at the end of each part, which the real assessment does not.

Reading

Read the story with your child, or let them read it alone. Then try the five questions.

The Sidewalk Library

Maya walked past the wooden box on Mr. Okonkwo's lawn every morning. It stood on a post, about as tall as she was, with a little glass door. Inside were books.

A sign on the front said: TAKE A BOOK. LEAVE A BOOK.

For a week, Maya only looked. She did not think the books could really be free.

On Friday, Mr. Okonkwo was raking leaves. "You can open it," he said. "That is what it is for."

Maya opened the door and took out a book about sharks. She read it twice that weekend.

On Monday she put it back. Beside it she left her own book, the one about horses that she had read four times already.

By June, the box had a book about rockets, two comics and a cookbook. Maya checked it every morning. She was never sure what she would find, and that was the best part.

Question 1. What did Maya take out of the box first?

• A. a comic
• B. a book about sharks
• C. a cookbook
• D. a book about horses

Question 2. Why did Maya leave her book about horses in the box?

• A. She did not like it.
• B. Mr. Okonkwo asked her to.
• C. She had finished with it and wanted to share it.
• D. It was too hard for her to read.

Question 3. In this story, the word "post" means

• A. a letter sent in the mail
• B. a wooden pole holding something up
• C. a job
• D. a message online

Question 4. What is the story mostly about?

• A. how to build a wooden box
• B. a girl who learns to share books with her neighbours
• C. why sharks are interesting
• D. Mr. Okonkwo raking leaves

Question 5. Which two things happened after Maya returned the shark book? Choose two.

• A. She left her horse book in the box.
• B. She first saw the box.
• C. The box had a cookbook in it by June.
• D. Mr. Okonkwo raked leaves.

Writing

The writing part of the real assessment asks for a short piece of writing, plus questions about capitals, full stops and word choice.

Question 6. Write about a time you shared something with someone. Say what you shared, who you shared it with, and how it went.

There is no right answer to this one. What a marker looks for is in the answer key below.

Question 7. Which sentence is written correctly?

• A. maya opened the door and took out a book.
• B. Maya opened the door and took out a book
• C. Maya opened the door and took out a book.
• D. Maya Opened the door and took out a book.

Question 8. Which word completes the sentence correctly? "Maya put the book back because ___ had finished it."

• A. she
• B. her
• C. hers
• D. she's

Mathematics

Ten questions, spread across the five math topics Grade 3 covers.

Question 9. In the number 407, what is the value of the 4?

• A. 4
• B. 40
• C. 400
• D. 4000

Question 10. Which list shows the numbers from least to greatest?

• A. 318, 381, 138
• B. 138, 318, 381
• C. 381, 318, 138
• D. 138, 381, 318

Question 11. A class collected 236 bottle caps in May and 185 in June. How many did they collect altogether?

• A. 311
• B. 411
• C. 421
• D. 431

Question 12. There are 6 tables in the classroom. Each table has 4 chairs. How many chairs are there?

• A. 10
• B. 18
• C. 24
• D. 64

Question 13. A pizza is cut into 8 equal slices. Maya eats 2 of them. Which fraction shows how much she ate?

• A. 2/8
• B. 8/2
• C. 2/6
• D. 6/8

Question 14. What is the next number in this pattern? 5, 10, 15, 20, ___

• A. 24
• B. 25
• C. 30
• D. 35

Question 15. A rectangle is 7 cm long and 3 cm wide. What is its perimeter?

• A. 10 cm
• B. 20 cm
• C. 21 cm
• D. 24 cm

Question 16. A pictograph shows favourite fruits. Each picture stands for 2 students. Apples have 5 pictures. How many students chose apples?

• A. 5
• B. 7
• C. 10
• D. 12

Question 17. A pencil costs 45 cents. A sticker costs 30 cents. How much change would you get from a toonie?

• A. $0.75
• B. $1.25
• C. $1.35
• D. $1.75

Question 18. A film starts at 3:45 p.m. and lasts 30 minutes. What time does it end?

• A. 4:05 p.m.
• B. 4:15 p.m.
• C. 4:30 p.m.
• D. 4:45 p.m.

Answer key

The working

1. B. The story says she "took out a book about sharks". The answer is written down, and finding it is the skill being tested.

2. C. This one is not written down anywhere, which is what makes it harder. Your child has to put two things together: the sign says LEAVE A BOOK, and Maya had read the horse book four times already. Joining two facts to reach a third is called inference, and it is the question type that separates children who read the words from children who follow the story.

3. B. "Post" has several meanings, and the story picks one. The box "stood on a post, about as tall as she was", so it is a pole. If your child chose A or D, they know the word, just not this use of it. Ask them how they can tell.

4. B. Main idea questions are about the whole story rather than one part of it. Sharks and raking leaves both appear, but neither is what the story is about. A useful question to ask: could you tell someone what happened in one sentence?

5. A and C. Returning the book happened on Monday. She left the horse book at the same time, and the cookbook appeared by June, so both come after. She first saw the box at the beginning, and the raking was on Friday. Note that this question asks for two answers, which the real assessment does too.

6. No single right answer. What a marker looks for: does the writing stay on the topic, does it have a beginning and an end, are the ideas in an order that makes sense, and do sentences start with a capital and finish with a full stop. If your child wrote three sentences that all belong together, that is a good outcome at this age.

7. C. A is missing the capital on Maya. B is missing the full stop. D has a capital on "Opened", which does not need one. C has a capital on the name only and a full stop at the end.

8. A. "She" does the finishing, so it is the doing word's subject. "Her" and "hers" belong later in a sentence, and "she's" means "she is", which does not fit.

9. C. The 4 sits in the hundreds place, so it is worth 400. Option B is the common slip, reading the position as tens.

10. B. Compare the hundreds first. 138 has one hundred, and the other two have three, so 138 is smallest. Then compare the tens in 318 and 381: one ten against eight tens.

11. C. 236 plus 185. Add the ones to get 11, so carry the ten. Option B is what you get by forgetting to carry.

12. C. Six groups of four. Option A is what you get by adding 6 and 4 instead of multiplying, which is the mistake worth catching.

13. A. The bottom number is how many equal pieces there are altogether, and the top number is how many were eaten. Two out of eight is 2/8. Option B is the same digits the wrong way round.

14. B. Each number goes up by 5. Ask your child to say the rule out loud rather than just the next number; naming the rule is the actual skill.

15. B. Perimeter is the distance all the way around, so add all four sides: 7 plus 3 plus 7 plus 3. Option A is what you get from adding only the two sides given.

16. C. Each picture is worth two students, so five pictures is ten students. Option A is what you get by counting the pictures instead of the students, which is the whole point of the question.

17. B. First add what was spent: 45 cents plus 30 cents is 75 cents. A toonie is $2.00, so the change is $1.25. Option A is the amount spent rather than the change, so it is worth checking your child read the question rather than just the numbers.

18. B. Adding 30 minutes to 3:45 takes you past the hour. Fifteen minutes reaches 4:00, and fifteen more makes 4:15. Option D is what you get by adding an hour.

What the answers actually tell you

Not very much on their own, and that is worth being honest about. Eighteen questions at a kitchen table is not an assessment, and you are not in a position to diagnose anything.

What it can show you is a pattern. Look at the What it tests column rather than the number right.

If the misses cluster in reading, and specifically on question 2, the issue is usually inference rather than reading. A child who can tell you what happened but not why it happened is reading the words and missing the story. We set out what that looks like at each age in how to improve reading comprehension.

If the misses cluster in math, look at whether they are calculation slips or misread questions. Options like 4:45 in question 18 and 75 cents in question 17 are there to catch reading the numbers without reading the sentence, which is a different problem from not knowing how to subtract.

If almost everything went wrong, stop. Do not run another practice test. Talk to the teacher instead, who has seen your child work for a year.

For scale: across English-language schools in 2024-2025, 74% of Grade 3 students met the provincial standard in reading, 65% in writing and 64% in math. Roughly a third of every Grade 3 class in the province sits below the standard in writing and math. It is common, and it is not a verdict on a child.

What to do about test nerves

This is the age where children start to worry about tests, and most of that worry comes from adults.

Three things help, and none of them is another worksheet.

Tell them the truth: it does not go on their report card, and there is nothing to pass. Children handle facts better than reassurance.

Let them meet the tool before the day. EQAO's sample test uses the real platform, and unfamiliar buttons are a real source of stress for an eight-year-old. Doing it once removes that entirely.

Keep your own face calm about it. A child reads a parent's anxiety faster than they read a passage.

When a teacher helps

Most Grade 3 families need nothing beyond the school. If your child is meeting the standard, or close to it, more practice tests are not the answer.

Bring in a teacher when the same difficulty has persisted across a school year, when the teacher has raised it too, or when you cannot tell whether the problem is the reading, the maths, or the sitting still. Once results arrive, EQAO results explained covers what each level means, and Ontario report card levels explained covers the separate scale the school actually uses.

That is the work Genie does. Genie works only with Canadian Certified Teachers, licensed by a provincial governing body such as the Ontario College of Teachers. Before a teacher sees a student profile, their certificate number and issuing body are checked against the provincial registry, with a live government-ID match. Genie calls this the Trust Engine. Students are matched by course, pace and personality, and parents get a per-lesson record of what was covered and what their child understood.

A certified teacher who has taught Grade 3 knows what Grade 3 is supposed to look like in May, which is the thing a worksheet cannot tell you. Maths support sits under math, and reading and writing under English.