What does the word gather mean in this sentence?
Understand Words and Language Structures · TELPAS Grade 3 reading. The correct answer, and the reasoning behind it.
Reporting category 1: work out what words and phrases mean from context, and understand how sentences and word forms work.
Read the passage. Then answer the questions.
The Bats Under the Bridge
In Austin, the Congress Avenue Bridge crosses Lady Bird Lake. Under the bridge lives a huge colony of bats. A colony is a big group of animals that live together. In summer, more than one million bats may live there.
These bats are called Mexican free-tailed bats. During the day, they sleep in narrow cracks under the bridge. When the sun goes down, they fly out to hunt. So many bats come out at once that they look like a dark cloud moving across the sky.
The bats eat insects, such as moths. In one night, the colony can eat thousands of pounds of bugs. That helps farmers, because many of those insects eat crops.
On summer evenings, crowds of people gather by the lake to watch the bats fly out. In the fall, the bats fly south to Mexico for the winter.
The question
Choose the best answer.
Read this sentence from the passage. “On summer evenings, crowds of people gather by the lake to watch the bats fly out.” What does the word gather mean in this sentence?
- Pick things up from the ground
- Come together in one placeCorrect answer
- Leave quickly
- Stay at home
Why “Come together in one place” is correct
This tests choosing the meaning of a word from how it is used. The sentence talks about crowds of people at the lake, all there to watch the bats, so gather means to come together in one place. The word can also mean picking things up, which is why reading the whole sentence matters.
Why the other answers are wrong
- Pick things up from the ground — Gather can mean picking things up, as in gathering leaves, but the people here are coming to watch bats.
- Leave quickly — The people come to the lake and stay to watch; they are not leaving.
- Stay at home — The people are by the lake, not at home.
Practice more of this
More reading practice for Grade 3, or see the TELPAS practice test for 3rd grade.
This is an independent study resource. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Texas Education Agency or the official TELPAS program. All questions here are original practice material written to match the published test design.