One of 3 item types in the TACHS Ability subtest
Figure classification: three figures alike, and a fourth to find
Below: the directions as Riverside Assessments prints them, what its answer key says the rules turn on, and 3 real questions from the 960 of this type here — shown without their answers, because the answer comes back on the practice page after you choose.
What the directions say
“In each question, the first three figures are alike in certain ways. Choose the answer choice that goes with the first three figures.”
Riverside Assessments — TACHS Student Handbook, Ability sample directions
What the publisher’s answer key says the rules are
The handbook prints a handful of samples and explains them. Those explanations are the only published statement of what this item type turns on, so every question here is built to that vocabulary and nothing else.
“All figures are ovals.”
“All figures are squares with the same diagonal stripes.”
“Each figure contains two circles and two parallel lines that are turned up only.”
“Each figure is a square that is divided into equal parts.”
How to work one
- Step 1
List what all three share
Go through the five things a rule can be about — shape, count, fill, turn, division — and write down, for each, whether the three given figures agree on it. Where they agree is the rule.
- Step 2
Keep every part of it
If they agree on two things, the answer has to match both. A choice that gets the shape right and the fill wrong is a distractor built to catch exactly a child who stopped reading after the shape.
- Step 3
Ignore what the three do not share
If the three figures are different sizes or sit in different corners of the box, that is not the rule, and a choice that copies one of them in that respect is not thereby right.
3 real questions, easiest first
Each is an original question of ours, lettered the way the TACHS letters its answer sheet. The answers are not on this page: pick one, then find out on the practice page, where every wrong choice explains why it is wrong.
In each question, the first three figures are alike in certain ways. Choose the answer choice that goes with the first three figures.
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
Read the three. In words, they are: 4 pentagons, with diagonal stripes; 3 pentagons, with horizontal stripes; 1 shaded pentagon. Go down the list — shape, count, fill, turn, division — and mark which of those all three agree on.
How much of a rule to expect. This one turns on one attribute, and the wrong choices are built so that each breaks a different part of it. The choice that keeps every part is the answer; the practice page will tell you which, after you pick.
In each question, the first three figures are alike in certain ways. Choose the answer choice that goes with the first three figures.
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
Read the three. In words, they are: 3 pentagons, with dots; 3 pentagons, with horizontal stripes; 3 shaded pentagons. Go down the list — shape, count, fill, turn, division — and mark which of those all three agree on.
How much of a rule to expect. This one turns on two attributes at once, and the wrong choices are built so that each breaks a different part of it. The choice that keeps every part is the answer; the practice page will tell you which, after you pick.
In each question, the first three figures are alike in certain ways. Choose the answer choice that goes with the first three figures.
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
Read the three. In words, they are: 4 triangles that point up, with horizontal stripes; 4 unshaded triangles that point up; 4 triangles that point up, with diagonal stripes. Go down the list — shape, count, fill, turn, division — and mark which of those all three agree on.
How much of a rule to expect. This one turns on three attributes at once, and the wrong choices are built so that each breaks a different part of it. The choice that keeps every part is the answer; the practice page will tell you which, after you pick.
Figure classification questions here
Ability questions in all
of them free, no sign-up
item types in the subtest
Try ten, and see the answer after each one
The practice page deals ten Ability questions at a time — all 3 item types mixed, as the paper mixes them — marks each one the moment you choose, and says what the rule was. No sign-up and no email.
The HSPT has no Ability subtest, so this page is about the TACHS only.
Related questions
What is a figure classification question?
Three figures are shown that are alike in certain ways, and the child chooses, from five answer choices, the one figure that goes with them. The rule is never stated: it has to be read off the three given figures, and Riverside Assessments’s own worked answers show it can be one thing (“all figures are ovals”) or several at once (“squares with the same diagonal stripes”).
What do figure classification rules turn on?
In the publisher’s worked answers: the shape, how many shapes there are, how they are filled, which way they are turned, and whether a shape is divided into equal parts. Not absolute size — nothing in a box gives a child a ruler to judge “medium” against, and no published rule uses it.
How many figure classification questions are on the TACHS?
Riverside Assessments does not publish a count for any item type, or for the Ability subtest, or for the paper. What it publishes is a handful of samples in the Student Handbook. There are 960 original questions of this type on this site, so the shape of the question can be practiced until it is familiar even though its share of the paper is not published.
Is figure classification on the HSPT?
No. The HSPT has no Ability subtest at all; its five subtests are Verbal Skills, Quantitative Skills, Reading, Mathematics and Language. Figure Classification, Paper Folding and Figure Matrices are the TACHS’s.
Every quotation on this page is from the TACHS Student Handbook, which Riverside Assessments publishes. It is named here, with what it settles.