MCAS Strategies
Before reading the MCAS passage, a useful strategy is to
Read the questions
In an argumentative essay, this sentence states the writer's position and previews the main points of support.
A Thesis Statement
What is a paragraph called in poetry? If a poem does not have page numbers, how do I cite it?
A stanza.... and you use the author's last name and the line number! .... "Quote" (Dickinson Line 3).
Which figurative language device is being used: I am a red balloon drifting through life.
Metaphor
Which continent is home to the Amazon rainforest?
South America
If a multiple-choice question is confusing or makes your brain shut down, what should you do?
Bookmark it and come back to it!
On open-response questions, this is the minimum number of pieces of textual evidence a strong answer should include to earn full credit.
Two pieces of evidence, one from each text!
Which institutional format do we use to cite evidence when writing?
MLA
Hatred is an example of ___ in Romeo and Juliet
a Motif
This Massachusetts city is home to the oldest public park in the United States, established in 1634.
Boston
If you don't recognize a word in an MCAS question, you should
Sound it out and see if it is similar to any other words you know, see if you recognize the root word. Or read through the text excerpts for context clues, or the questions to see if they define it!
You should use this in each of your body paragraphs to support your claim, formatted correctly with proper credit.
A Quote/ Evidence from the text and an In-text citation!
... "Quote" (Author Last Name pg or line number). Example ....“ Faces were strained and fearful- but Beowulf laughed before plunging headlong into the pool” (Nye 65).
What is connotation, and what is denotation?
Connotation is the emotional definition of a word. Denotation is the dictionary definition of a word.
"It is raining cats and dogs" is an example of what literary device?
An idiom
Name the most-streamed song in Spotify history.
"Blinding Lights" by The Weeknd
When writing about literature (stories) on the MCAS, students should write in this tense ...
The present tense
Words like "furthermore," "in addition," or "moreover" are examples of ___ sentences.
Transition sentences
The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, and Percy Jackson all feature this classic story structure — a young, ordinary person discovers they have an extraordinary destiny.
The Hero's Journey
This literary term describes a novel that follows the moral and psychological growth of its main character from youth to adulthood
Bildungsroman or 'Coming of Age'
This country has the most natural lakes in the world, containing about 60% of the world's freshwater lakes.
Canada
In a multiple-choice question, there is a correct answer, and this question that is trying to get you to choose incorrectly.
The lead distractor! Remember, some questions will ask for the BEST answer. Be careful!
When you get a writing prompt during MCAS, you will have to write either a ____ , ____, or ____ . Get two out of three!
Narrative Response
Argument Response
Informative Response
What is the MAIN IDEA...In the summer of 1956, a highway engineer named Robert Moses bulldozed sixteen neighborhoods in the Bronx to make way for the Cross Bronx Expressway. He did not consult the 60,000 residents who were displaced. He did not study alternative routes, though several existed. He simply built.
For decades afterward, urban planners celebrated Moses as a visionary. His bridges, parks, and roadways reshaped New York City in ways that still define it today. Textbooks called him a genius of infrastructure. Cities across America modeled their own development on his methods.
Yet the neighborhoods Moses erased did not disappear quietly. The South Bronx, once a thriving working-class community with jazz clubs, family-owned businesses, and intergenerational stability, collapsed into poverty and disrepair within a generation. Researchers who studied the area in the 1970s noted skyrocketing rates of arson, disease, and unemployment — all concentrated along the corridor of the expressway. The highway had not just displaced people. It had severed the social and economic networks that held a community together.
We tend to measure progress by what is built. Rarely do we account for what is destroyed in the building. The expressway still carries over 175,000 vehicles per day. The neighborhoods it replaced have never fully recovered.
Progress is often measured by what is built, while the human cost of what is destroyed goes unaccounted for
In the line "He was a lion in battle, a lamb at home," the author uses two back-to-back metaphors — drawing a sharp contrast between two sides of the same person. What literary device is this?
Juxtaposition
Which animal has the strongest bite force (exceeding 3,000 psi.) of any living creature?
The saltwater crocodile