After a plague killed roughly a third of Europe's population in the fourteenth century, many surviving peasants left their manors in search of higher pay, and lords found it harder to enforce traditional labor duties. Which factor best explains this change?

A labor shortage raised the bargaining power of workers.

New farming machines reduced the need for field workers.

Trade with the Americas brought new crops to rural areas.

Monarchs abolished serfdom in order to reward their armies.

Yucca plants can be pollinated only by yucca moths. The female moth carries pollen from flower to flower and lays her eggs inside the flower, where the larvae eat some, but not all, of the developing seeds. If yucca moths disappeared from an area, what would most likely happen?

The yuccas would make few or no seeds, and new yucca plants would become rare

The yuccas would switch to wind pollination within a few growing seasons there

The yuccas would be unaffected, since adult plants live for many years anyway

The yuccas would make more seeds, because larvae would no longer eat any of them

Making maple syrup at an Ohio sugarbush begins in late winter, when nights still freeze but days climb above freezing. First, workers drill a small hole in each sugar maple and tap in a spout. Next, they hang a bucket or connect plastic tubing so the clear sap can drip out. After the sap is collected, it is poured into a wide pan called an evaporator and boiled for hours. As the water steams away, the sap thickens and darkens. Finally, when it reaches the right thickness, the syrup is filtered and bottled. It takes about forty gallons of sap to make a single gallon of syrup. A teacher wants students to take notes on the paragraph with a graphic organizer that matches how its information is organized. Which organizer fits best?

A flow chart of boxes linked by arrows

A problem box linked to a solution box

A web with details around a central word

A Venn diagram with two overlapping circles

The cotton gin made it much faster to separate seeds from cotton fiber, reducing the labor needed for that one task. What was the most significant long-term effect of this invention in the South?

Slavery expanded as cotton planting spread to new lands.

Southern cities grew into the nation's textile centers.

Slavery declined as planters needed fewer field workers.

Planters shifted from cotton to tobacco and indigo crops.

A town flyer uses a pictograph to compare recycling. Town A's amount is shown by a small recycling bin. Town B, which recycled twice as much, is shown by a bin drawn twice as tall and twice as wide. Why is the pictograph misleading?

The larger bin has four times the area, so it exaggerates the difference.

The bins should be drawn in different colors so readers can tell them apart.

Pictographs can only compare amounts that are whole-number multiples.

Town A's bin should be the larger one because it is listed first in the key.

The emerald ash borer, a beetle from Asia, has killed millions of ash trees in Ohio since arriving in North America. Which factor best explains why it spread so quickly?

It had few natural predators or diseases here, and native ash had little defense

It feeds on every kind of tree, so it never runs out of food in Ohio forests

It reproduces only in winter, when birds that might eat it have migrated south

It was brought on purpose to control pests, so people helped it to spread widely

OAE Elementary Education Subtests I and II (018/019)

Free OAE Elementary Ed (018/019) Practice Questions

10 sample questions for the OAE Elementary Education Subtests I and II (018/019), with the correct answer and an explanation for each. No account needed. Try each one before you open the answer.

Sections covered on the exam: Oral Language, Listening, and Emergent Literacy, Geography and Social Studies Inquiry, The Nature of Science and Scientific Inquiry, The Arts, Health, and Fitness.

Question 1 · Oral Language, Listening, and Emergent Literacy
How many phonemes are in the spoken word “knight”?
- A.6
- B.5
- C.3
- D.4
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. 3
Phonemes are counted by sound, not by letter: “knight” is /n/ /ī/ /t/, three phonemes. The k and gh are silent, and igh together spells one long i sound. Counting letters or partial spellings leads to the larger totals.
Question 2 · Oral Language, Listening, and Emergent Literacy
The Cuyahoga and the Scioto are both Ohio rivers, but they end up in very different places. The Cuyahoga finishes its journey in Lake Erie at Cleveland, so its water eventually travels to the Atlantic Ocean by way of the St. Lawrence River. The Scioto, on the other hand, flows south through Columbus to join the Ohio River, sending its water toward the Gulf of Mexico. Both rivers once carried heavy pollution from nearby factories and cities. Similarly, both have improved greatly as cleanup laws took effect, and today each draws kayakers and anglers.
Which text structure does the paragraph mainly use?
- A.Compare and contrast
- B.Cause and effect
- C.Problem and solution
- D.Chronological order
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. Compare and contrast
Signal words such as both, on the other hand, and similarly show that the writer is explaining how the two rivers differ and how they are alike. Pollution and cleanup are mentioned, but only as one more point of similarity, so problem and solution is not the main structure.
Question 3 · Geography and Social Studies Inquiry
After a plague killed roughly a third of Europe's population in the fourteenth century, many surviving peasants left their manors in search of higher pay, and lords found it harder to enforce traditional labor duties. Which factor best explains this change?
- A.New farming machines reduced the need for field workers.
- B.Trade with the Americas brought new crops to rural areas.
- C.A labor shortage raised the bargaining power of workers.
- D.Monarchs abolished serfdom in order to reward their armies.
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. A labor shortage raised the bargaining power of workers.
With so many workers dead, surviving laborers were scarce and could demand wages or better terms, which weakened the manorial system. Farm machinery and contact with the Americas came centuries later, so they cannot explain a fourteenth-century shift.
Question 4 · The Nature of Science and Scientific Inquiry
A student states: "When you multiply a whole number by a fraction, the product is always smaller than the whole number."
Which equation is a counterexample to the student's claim?
- A.3 × 5/4 = 15/4
- B.10 × 1/5 = 2
- C.6 × 1/2 = 3
- D.8 × 3/4 = 6
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. 3 × 5/4 = 15/4
A counterexample must satisfy the conditions of the claim and still make it false. Since 15/4 is 3 3/4, which is greater than 3, multiplying by a fraction greater than 1 disproves the claim. The other equations use fractions less than 1, so their products are smaller than the whole number and actually support the claim.
Question 5 · The Nature of Science and Scientific Inquiry
Yucca plants can be pollinated only by yucca moths. The female moth carries pollen from flower to flower and lays her eggs inside the flower, where the larvae eat some, but not all, of the developing seeds. If yucca moths disappeared from an area, what would most likely happen?
- A.The yuccas would switch to wind pollination within a few growing seasons there
- B.The yuccas would be unaffected, since adult plants live for many years anyway
- C.The yuccas would make more seeds, because larvae would no longer eat any of them
- D.The yuccas would make few or no seeds, and new yucca plants would become rare
Show answer and explanation
Answer: D. The yuccas would make few or no seeds, and new yucca plants would become rare
The relationship is mutualism: the moth gets food for its larvae and the yucca gets its only pollinator. Without pollination, the plants cannot set seed, so the larvae no longer eating seeds does not matter. A plant population cannot rapidly change its pollination method in response to a need.
Question 6 · Oral Language, Listening, and Emergent Literacy
Which pair of words begins with the same phoneme?
- A.cent and sat
- B.cat and city
- C.gnat and goat
- D.chef and chin
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. cent and sat
Before e, the letter c usually stands for /s/, so cent and sat both begin with /s/. Cat and city, chef and chin, and gnat and goat each share a first letter but not a first sound (/k/ vs /s/, /sh/ vs /ch/, /n/ vs /g/), which is why letter-based thinking leads students astray in phonemic tasks.
Question 7 · Oral Language, Listening, and Emergent Literacy
Making maple syrup at an Ohio sugarbush begins in late winter, when nights still freeze but days climb above freezing. First, workers drill a small hole in each sugar maple and tap in a spout. Next, they hang a bucket or connect plastic tubing so the clear sap can drip out. After the sap is collected, it is poured into a wide pan called an evaporator and boiled for hours. As the water steams away, the sap thickens and darkens. Finally, when it reaches the right thickness, the syrup is filtered and bottled. It takes about forty gallons of sap to make a single gallon of syrup.
A teacher wants students to take notes on the paragraph with a graphic organizer that matches how its information is organized. Which organizer fits best?
- A.A problem box linked to a solution box
- B.A web with details around a central word
- C.A Venn diagram with two overlapping circles
- D.A flow chart of boxes linked by arrows
Show answer and explanation
Answer: D. A flow chart of boxes linked by arrows
Signal words such as first, next, after, and finally show the steps of a process in time order, so a flow chart with arrows mirrors the sequence structure. The paragraph describes sap and syrup, but a web would lose the order of the steps, and nothing in it compares two things or poses a problem.
Question 8 · Geography and Social Studies Inquiry
The cotton gin made it much faster to separate seeds from cotton fiber, reducing the labor needed for that one task. What was the most significant long-term effect of this invention in the South?
- A.Slavery expanded as cotton planting spread to new lands.
- B.Southern cities grew into the nation's textile centers.
- C.Slavery declined as planters needed fewer field workers.
- D.Planters shifted from cotton to tobacco and indigo crops.
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. Slavery expanded as cotton planting spread to new lands.
Because cleaning cotton became cheap, short-staple cotton became highly profitable, and planters moved west and bought more enslaved people to plant and pick it. Assuming slavery declined overlooks that planting and harvesting still required enormous labor, and most textile mills were in the North and Britain. Description of an ancient government: Citizens elected officials who served limited terms. Two consuls shared the highest executive office so that neither could rule alone, and a senate of experienced leaders advised them and controlled public funds.
Question 9 · The Nature of Science and Scientific Inquiry
A town flyer uses a pictograph to compare recycling. Town A's amount is shown by a small recycling bin. Town B, which recycled twice as much, is shown by a bin drawn twice as tall and twice as wide.
Why is the pictograph misleading?
- A.The bins should be drawn in different colors so readers can tell them apart.
- B.Pictographs can only compare amounts that are whole-number multiples.
- C.The larger bin has four times the area, so it exaggerates the difference.
- D.Town A's bin should be the larger one because it is listed first in the key.
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. The larger bin has four times the area, so it exaggerates the difference.
Doubling both the height and the width multiplies the area by 2 × 2 = 4, so readers see a picture four times as large for an amount only twice as large. A fair pictograph would use two bins of the same size for Town B, or a bar graph with a scale starting at zero.
Question 10 · The Nature of Science and Scientific Inquiry
The emerald ash borer, a beetle from Asia, has killed millions of ash trees in Ohio since arriving in North America. Which factor best explains why it spread so quickly?
- A.It had few natural predators or diseases here, and native ash had little defense
- B.It feeds on every kind of tree, so it never runs out of food in Ohio forests
- C.It reproduces only in winter, when birds that might eat it have migrated south
- D.It was brought on purpose to control pests, so people helped it to spread widely
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. It had few natural predators or diseases here, and native ash had little defense
Invasive species often spread rapidly because the predators, parasites and diseases that limit them in their native range are absent, and local hosts have not evolved defenses. The ash borer attacks ash trees specifically, not every tree, and its spread was accidental, often helped by people moving firewood.

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