ICAS Year 4 test

One of ICAS’s greatest strengths is that it enables teachers to evaluate their students’ abilities across multiple skills, which can be compared with the results of thousands of students across Australia. This information helps to modify teaching plans to address areas of need, as well as support areas of excellence.

Measure your students' abilities

Get rich insights into the learning needs of your Year 4 students with ICAS – the internationally-recognised academic competition.

In addition to motivating and rewarding your students, you’ll get a clear breakdown of their strengths and weaknesses and have a better idea of which skill areas to focus on from the curriculum.

ICAS Year 4 tests are created by education measurement experts, psychometricians and experienced teachers. Together, they create the challenging tests that put so many students through their paces every year.

Get valuable student insights from the ICAS Year 4 tests

Identify students' strengths and weaknesses, marked with “S” and “W” in the results report.

Discover which students need extra attention, and which may need extra work.

Determine whether you need to create new gifted and talented classes or support classes.

Find out which direction your students’ performance is trending.

Discover how your students compare against their fellow classmates and the rest of the school.

Find out whether your students’ skill level is below grade, at grade, or above grade.

ICAS Year 4 test subjects

The ICAS test papers differ for every year. You can find out the correct version for the Year 4 competition on this page.

English

The Year 4 test for ICAS English asks students to read a variety of texts, before asking them to identify, understand, and analyse key aspects. They may be asked to summarise the writer’s argument, identify a pronoun referent, explain the purpose of a rhetorical question, and more.

The goal is to test their text comprehension, writer’s craft, syntax knowledge, and vocabulary – crucial English skills.

Mathematics

The Year 4 assessment for ICAS Mathematics covers the following skill areas:

Chance & data
Number & arithmetic
Algebra & patterns
Space & geometry
Measures & units

Students may be required to compare whole numbers, solve simple fraction problems, use metric units in the correct context, identify axes of symmetry, and more.

Science

The Year 4 competition for ICAS Science is all about testing students key scientific skills, which includes the ability to observe and measure, interpret results, predict and conclude, investigate phenomenon, and reason/problem solve what happens during experiments.

These skill areas are tested on topics such as Earth & beyond, energy & change, natural & processed materials, and more.

Digital Technologies

The Year 4 exam for Digital Technologies aims to test the following critical areas for the subject:

Word processing
Graphics & multimedia
Programming
General skills
Internet & email
Spreadsheets & databases

Students may be expected to print documents, manipulate graphics, use internet bookmarks, present data is specific formats, and more.

Writing

The Year 4 assessment for ICAS Writing tests students in two essential skill areas:

Persuasive writing – students are expected to produce a persuasive piece of writing, which could be in the form of an argument, an advert, a campaign manifest, or another format.
Narrative writing – students are required to create multiple narrative-type pieces, such as the beginning of a story, a description of a setting or a character portrayal.

The evaluation of this work is based on genre, textual grammar and syntax/punctuation criteria.

Spelling Bee

Year 4 exam for Spelling Bee is made up of roughly 40 words of varying difficulty – from simple words like “who” to tough words like “restaurant.”

The goal is to test a variety of knowledge types related to spelling:

Visual knowledge
Phonological knowledge
Morphological knowledge
Etymological knowledge

Practise Year 4 ICAS with past papers

The ICAS competition is tough, and you can help your students prepare with our past papers. They’re the most genuine way to practise for the tests, with former questions and answers from previous competitions.

All year levels for ICAS

Year 2

Year 3

Year 4

Year 5

Year 6

Year 7

Year 8

Year 9

Year 10

Year 11

Year 12

Ready to discover your students’ strengths and weaknesses?

The ICAS competition assists you with analysing your students’ performance across key subjects, so that you can better understand their needs, improve your reports, and receive rich data for interviews with parents.