Science Drills

How the drills work

One small step at a time, in order

A drill practices one thing and nothing else. The drills are numbered in order, and they come in families. The families follow the nine parts of the Map of the Terrain, and inside each family the drills are listed under the Map’s numbered topics. You can work straight down the list, one drill after another.

Family I, the Scientist’s Toolkit, comes first. It practices the skills behind almost every question on the science test: reading a science passage, the scientific method, tables and graphs, diagrams, reasoning from data, numbers and units, and simple statistics. The test asks you to use these skills on a passage, table, graph or diagram that is on the screen, so they pay off on every question.

Each drill starts with two worked examples, with every step shown, and links to the page where the subject is taught. Then come ten questions, or five if you are short of time. Many questions come with a short passage, a table, or the description of an experiment, the way GED Science questions do. Check your answers on the screen and read the reasoning for each one, or print the set, with its answer key on the last page. Press New set for different questions.

A drill is mastered when you get all ten right, or all five right twice in a row. A mastered drill gets a check mark on this page. The check marks are kept in this browser only; on another phone or computer they start fresh.

If two sets in a row go badly (fewer than 7 of 10 right, or fewer than 4 of 5), the drill will send you to the page that teaches the subject, to read it first.

Twenty-nine drills are here now, I.01 to I.29. The rest of Family I, in grey below, is being written; the other families will follow, one at a time. The Kaplan lessons named under each drill are in Unit 4 (Science), Chapter 1 (Science Practices) of Kaplan GED Test Prep Plus.