TELPAS Practice

What is paragraph 3 mostly about?

Basic Understanding of a Variety of Texts · TELPAS Grades 4–5 reading. The correct answer, and the reasoning behind it.

Reporting category 2: find the main idea and key details, and follow what happens in stories and informational texts.

Read the passage. Then answer the questions.

The Texas Horned Lizard

The Texas horned lizard is a small, flat lizard with sharp horns on its head and short spines along its back and sides. Many people call it a “horny toad,” but it is not a toad at all. It is a reptile, and it is the official state reptile of Texas.

Horned lizards live in dry, open places with sandy or rocky ground. Their main food is harvester ants. One horned lizard can eat dozens of ants in a single day.

This lizard has some surprising ways to stay safe. Its brown and gray colors help it blend in with the ground, so a hungry hawk may fly right past it. If an enemy comes close, the lizard can puff up its body so it looks bigger and is harder to swallow. When it is in real danger, it can even squirt a thin stream of blood from the corners of its eyes. The blood tastes bad to coyotes and dogs.

Today, horned lizards are harder to find in many parts of Texas than they were years ago. Scientists think there are several reasons. Some of the land where the lizards once lived is now covered by roads and buildings, and in many areas there are fewer harvester ants for them to eat. In Texas, it is against the law to take a horned lizard from the wild or to keep one as a pet.

The question

Choose the best answer.

What is paragraph 3 mostly about?

  • The animals that like to hunt horned lizards
  • The ants that horned lizards eat
  • The ways a horned lizard protects itselfCorrect answer
  • Why coyotes dislike the taste of blood

Why “The ways a horned lizard protects itself” is correct

This tests finding the main idea of one paragraph. The first sentence states it ("This lizard has some surprising ways to stay safe"), and every other sentence gives one of those ways: color, puffing up, squirting blood. The wrong choices are each a single detail, which is the usual trap in main-idea questions.

Why the other answers are wrong

  • The animals that like to hunt horned lizards — Hawks and coyotes are named, but only as part of explaining how the lizard stays safe.
  • The ants that horned lizards eat — The ants are in paragraph 2, not paragraph 3.
  • Why coyotes dislike the taste of blood — This is one detail in the paragraph, not what the whole paragraph is about.

Practice more of this

More reading practice for Grades 4–5, or see the TELPAS practice test for 4th and 5th 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.