FAST ELA Grade 3 study guide
FAST ELA Grade 3 · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The FAST ELA Grade 3 assessment is Florida's statewide progress-monitoring test in English Language Arts, administered to third graders as part of the Florida Assessment of Student Thinking (FAST). It is a computer-based assessment built around reading passages followed by multiple-choice and technology-enhanced items, and it is used to gauge whether students are meeting grade-level expectations in reading. Because third grade is a pivotal year for reading development, results can carry implications for promotion and for placement in intervention support, so teachers and families often pay close attention to this test. The content spans literary and informational reading, vocabulary and figurative language, comparing texts and understanding text structure, and foundational skills such as phonics and word analysis. The FAST ELA Grade 3 study guide has 5 sections and about 1,292 words.
01Reading: Literary Text
Literary text questions ask about stories, poems, and plays. You need to track characters (who they are and how they change), setting (time and place), plot (what happens first, next, last), and theme (the lesson or big idea).
271 words, about 1 min02Reading: Informational Text
Informational text gives facts. You must find the main idea (what the whole text is mostly about) and the supporting details (facts that explain it).
264 words, about 1 min03Vocabulary and Figurative Language
You need context clues to figure out unknown words: definitions, examples, synonyms, antonyms, and general sense of the sentence. Know figurative language : simile (uses like or as ), metaphor (says one thing is another), personification (gives human traits to objects), and idioms (sayings whose meaning is not literal).
248 words, about 1 min04Reading Across Texts and Text Structure
Some questions give two passages on the same topic. You must find how they are alike and different in topic, main idea, and details.
250 words, about 1 min05Foundational Skills: Phonics, Word Analysis, and Fluency
Phonics questions test letter-sound patterns : short and long vowels, vowel teams (ai, ea, oa), r-controlled vowels (ar, or, er), digraphs (sh, ch, th), blends (bl, str), and silent e. Word analysis covers syllables, base words, prefixes, suffixes, and compound words.
259 words, about 1 min