The 5 Blocks Method for a Better Score on Standardized Tests + Entrance Exams

Photo by Julia Khalimova

Many students struggle with the grammar, vocabulary, and reading sections of standardized tests because they don’t know how to quickly read the questions and pick out the most relevant information. This results in them wasting precious seconds on the SHSAT ELA, ISEE verbal, and SAT Reading and Writing sections. Head of Test Prep, Katya Seberson, teaches Ivy Tutors Network students to use her proprietary FIVE blocks method to move through questions quickly while increasing comprehension, thus improving accuracy, boosting scores and saving time. This blog walks you through the methodology so you can learn it and apply it for whatever standardized test or entrance exam you’re taking.

What Is the Five Blocks Method?

The five blocks method of sentence structure is a teaching strategy sometimes used in literacy and test prep to help students visually break down and de-construct sentences. It has been adapted by several instructors, but can be traced back to An Introduction to Functional Grammar by Michael Halliday. We’re going to give you the TL; DR version so that you can learn it - and apply it - quickly.

The general idea is that every complete sentence - even the complex academic sentences favored by the creators of standardized tests - can be understood as five conceptual “blocks.”

Block 1: Subject

• The main noun, pronoun, or gerund
• Example: The student OR Learning

Block 2: Verb (What the subject does or is; The Action)

• The action or state of being.
• Example: studied OR is

Block 3: Object/Complement (Who or what receives the action, or completes the meaning)

• Example: the passage

Block 4: Modifier(s) (When, where, how, why, under what conditions)

• Adjectives, adverbs, or phrases that add detail.
• Example: carefully or in the library

Note from Katya: We often call block four “additional phrases” instead of modifiers because it will be a part of the sentence, often between commas or dashes, that could be completely removed and the sentence would still make sense. Its job - in standardized testing - is to add complexity. They elevate writing to a more advanced level.

Block 5: Clauses

It’s critical for students to understand IC (independent clauses, DC (dependent Clauses), and RC (relative clauses) and how they create meaning on the page.

Take this sentence: The student studied the passage carefully in the library because the test was tomorrow. The five blocks are as follows.

• Block 1: The student (subject)
• Block 2: studied (verb)
• Block 3: the passage (object)
• Block 4: carefully in the library (modifiers)
• Block 5: because the test was tomorrow (connector + dependent clause)

Now the sentence above is pretty basic. It’s definitely not as complex as what you’ll be expected to read and understand for the SHSAT, SAT, ACT, or any other standardized test. But the beauty of the 5 blocks method is that it can be used on any sentence, regardless of complexity.

Why Study the 5 Blocks for Standardized Tests?

Standardized tests are designed to measure a student’s ability to read and comprehend complex passages in short amounts of time. They do this by building challenging sentences that do not follow the subject - verb - object pattern beginning readers learn to recognize in a straightforward way.

Let’s take a look at an example.

Simple Sentence: Susie likes books.

Easy to pick out the first three blocks, right? But of course the SHSAT (or any other standardized test) isn’t going to present you with a sentence that simple. They’re going to take the basic idea of the simple sentence and turn it into an advanced sentence.

Advanced Sentence: Excited about becoming a world-famous author, Susie, an astute student from New York, developed a strong affinity for - but not limited to - international literature.

Students who see this sentence on a standardized test need to be able to quickly understand that Susie is still the subject, developed is the verb, and international literature is the object in order to correctly answer the questions. The five blocks method allows students to quickly identify the parts of the sentence to accurately find the most relevant information.

Analyze a sentence with Katya: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2QsmkIsbls

Getting from Beginning to Advanced Reader

You might be asking yourself at this point if the five blocks method is really necessary if you - or your student - is already a strong reader. And quite honestly the answer might be no! But Ivy Tutors Network has worked with thousands of students in the last 20+ years and one thing we can say for sure is that Covid hurt many bright students’ reading comprehension because they were remote learning during the “intermediate” stage of reading years. What do we mean by this? Let’s go back to the sentence examples above.

We gave you the simple sentence, Susie likes books, and then recreated it as an advanced sentence. But students do not jump straight from simple to advanced sentences. They start by understanding intermediate sentences, like this:

Susie, who dreams of being an author when she grows up, reads at least two books a week to grow her vocabulary.

That sentence packs in way more information and a subordinated clause, but it’s not yet to the complexity of the advanced sentence. Due to Covid, many students who are now being asked to understand and interpret advanced sentences are failing to move past these intermediate ones. And if we’re being honest, this pattern isn’t just about Covid: plenty of students fail to read regularly or to challenge themselves with what they do read. The five blocks method gives students the ability to quickly parse out relevant information by identifying the main components of a sentence no matter its complexity.

If you have the time, check out this 30 minute video from one of our SAT Boost classes, in which the students work with Katya to go from a basic sentence, to an SAT-level sentence.

Why Reading Still Matters

We don’t want to imply that the five blocks method can or should replace regular reading as the best way to improve comprehension. We encourage all of our students in SHSAT Boost, SAT Bootcamp, or any of our test prep programs, to read a minimum of 25 pages a day from something they find challenging, and ideally non-fiction. We often recommend The Economist or The Atlantic to high school students prepping for the SAT or ACT. For younger students, such as 7th or 8th graders preparing for the SHSAT, TACHS, ISEE, etc, narrative nonfiction is a good place to start (think: I am Malala or The Boy Who Followed His Father to Auschwitz). Our tutors can recommend age-appropriate reading for students that will challenge them, and your school or local librarian is also a great resource.

Here’s Katya explaining why SAT reading passages trip up students and why reading still matters, plus how the 5 blocks boost pattern recognition and overall comprehension. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmmPEuSaD10

Get a Better Test Score

Ultimately, the goal of the 5 blocks method is to improve your test score, no matter if you’re taking the SHSAT, the SAT, or another standardized test. The five blocks is one way to do that but it will require practice. There’s no way around that. You can do this on your own through test prep books: for every sentence in the reading comprehension sections identify the blocks of the sentence until you can do it quickly, almost without thinking. Then move onto entirely new passages and use what you’ve learned to test your comprehension with the practice questions.

That being said, of course, most students we know prefer an engaging, interactive learning experience to rote work on their own. Which is why both our SAT and SHSAT courses use regular live sessions to help students learn and master concepts like the 5 blocks method that improve retention and boost scores. Sign up for SHSAT Boost or SAT Boost today.

Need help with a different standardized test? Schedule a consultation to find the right one-on-one tutor to help you reach your goals.