TEAS reading: integration of knowledge and ideas study guide

What this topic actually asks of you

Integration of knowledge and ideas is the third of the three Reading sub-content areas on the ATI TEAS. ATI publishes its size: it is 10% of the exam and 15 of the 39 scored reading questions. Reading is 26% of the 150 scored questions and is timed separately — 55 minutes.

Two things follow, and they shape how to study it.

• The answer is a join, not a find. Key ideas asks what a passage says, and craft and structure asks how it is said; this topic asks you to do something with what you read — say what comes next, say what the text will carry, hold two texts side by side, weigh a claim against its evidence, or read a passage and a labeled source together. Every item still hands you the text. What is new is that the deciding information usually sits in two places, and the answer lives in the join between them.
• The wrong choices are unfinished joins. A distractor here is rarely nonsense: it is true of one of the two sources and not the other, it stops one step short of the conclusion, it repeats the claim instead of weighing the evidence, or it reads the right line in the wrong unit. Naming which of those happened is what turns a miss into a method.

Our practice items are single-answer and text-only. The real ATI TEAS also uses other item types: ATI's own content outline lists multiple-choice, multiple-select, fill-in-the-blank numeric, hot spot and ordered-response items. Elk Ridge Academy's practice items are single-answer only, and they carry no pictures or diagrams — a two-passage item writes its passages as two labeled lines of text, a table or log is written as plain lines with a label above them, and nothing is drawn — so treat the method, not any one format, as the thing you are drilling.

How a practice item is laid out. The passage comes first, as body text; a blank line separates it from the question, which is the only part that is asking. A two-passage item writes the pair as Passage A: and Passage B: lines, one after the other; an item that reads a table, log or set of figures prints the label and its lines after the passage. Read the passage through once, then read the question, then go back to the text — the question tells you which source decides, and what it is being asked to decide.

ATI's objectives for this topic. ATI's Content Outline names what this sub-content area measures, and every practice item below maps to one of them: R.3.1 use evidence from the text to make predictions, inferences, and draw conclusions · R.3.2 compare and contrast the themes expressed in one or more texts · R.3.3 evaluate an argument · R.3.4 evaluate and integrate data from multiple sources across various formats, including media.

The eight procedures

Every practice item in this topic is one of these eight. Each is worked out in full below — the method, a worked example on its own short passages, and the trap it sets. (The ATI objective each one serves is in brackets.)

1. evidence for a prediction — what the text says will happen next [R.3.1]. Take the direction the text has already set — an order placed, a season beginning, a rule adopted — and say what follows from it. The answer is the option that follows the direction the text has set — a change, or a continuation of it — and it is not the option that merely restates a present fact.
2. evidence for a conclusion — the conclusion this text will carry [R.3.1]. The text gives findings, not a verdict. Your job is to say which verdict the findings support, and which one they refuse — the option that overstates, or that reads a cause where only a timing is on the page.
3. compare two passages — the shared point and the split [R.3.2]. Two accounts of one subject: find the claim both would sign, then find the sentence where they part. The trap is an option that is true of one passage, offered as what both say.
4. theme in two passages — the idea both passages carry [R.3.2]. A theme is an idea two texts express, not a topic they share. Both passages are about something; you are asked for the idea each one's details are working for. Watch for a topic word that appears in both texts — it is a subject, not a theme.
5. evaluate an argument — the claim, its support, and what would break it [R.3.3]. Locate the claim, locate the evidence under it, then judge the link. Items on this skill usually ask four ways: which finding strengthens the claim, which finding weakens it, what the reasoning assumes without saying, and whether the conclusion is supported at all.
6. judge the evidence — can this evidence carry this claim? [R.3.3]. The claim is fixed and you judge the support: which line is relevant, which is enough, which is the strongest, and which does not bear on the claim at all. Relevance is about the claim's own subject, not about the subject's neighborhood.
7. integrate two sources — the passage and the labeled source together [R.3.4]. A passage and a table, log or set of figures; the answer needs both, and usually asks which line of one explains a figure of the other. One source alone will answer a different question, and that option will be waiting for you.
8. evaluate a visual source — read the line, not your memory [R.3.4]. The labeled source is printed as lines of text. Read the label, read the figure, and answer from what is printed — the value on the named line, the highest or lowest across lines, the total, or the difference between two.

Reference tables: the methods to know cold

Table A — The eight procedures, and the question each one asks. The tag is what the practice bank prints; the wording column is how the question reaches you on test day.

Table B — One source, or two? The first thing to settle on any R.3 item is how many texts the answer has to come out of. Getting this wrong is a common way an item goes to the wrong choice.

Table C — The relation the stem asks for (R.3.3). An argument item is never "what does the passage say". The stem names what the finding does to the claim, and the six labels are the whole vocabulary. Read the stem for its verb before you read the options.

Table D — The five named confusions. Most wrong choices in this bank are one of these, and naming the one that caught you is what the review step is for.

Table E — Reading a labeled source as lines. Nowhere to click, so read it like a ledger: the label first, then the figure, then the unit.

• What this topic asks for. A value read off a named line · the highest or lowest across lines · a total of two or more lines · the difference between two lines.
• What this bank's visual items ask for. Read, highest/lowest, total, difference — nothing else. No visual-source item in this bank asks you to compute a mean, a percent change, a rate or an extrapolated value. A passage may print one (an average attendance, a cost per thousand), and an item may ask about it; reading a printed figure is not computing it. A choice that offers a computed mean, a percent change, a rate or a projection is wrong here — a figure the passage prints is a read, not a computation. Treat that as a fact about this bank, not a rule for the exam: ATI's R.3.4 asks you to evaluate and integrate data, and a real item may ask for a comparison this bank has not used.
• The note column explains, it does not compute. A parenthetical that explains why a line reads the way it does is not itself the figure. The question asks for the reading, not the reason.

Table F — Position and wording tells to ignore. A well-built bank teaches nothing by the shape of the answer sheet. Do not read these:

• Where a choice sits. The key is spread across all four positions, and no position is likelier than another.
• How long a choice is. Do not rely on length: the key is sometimes the longest choice and sometimes the shortest, and a length signal is an accident of the sentence, not a clue.
• Which choice repeats the text's words. The most familiar-sounding option is often the true-but-off-topic choice. The key is the one that answers this question.
• The order stems appear in. Every procedure above is written in a rotating order in the bank, so the tag you learned last week has no special place in next week's set.

A five-step method for any R.3 item

Use the same five moves every time, and the topic stops feeling like guessing.

1. Count the sources before you read a word. One passage, two passages, or a passage plus a labeled source? That single question picks the procedure (Table B) and tells you the answer is a join. Many R.3 misses are items answered from one source when the question asked for two.
2. Read for what the text is doing, not what it says. A prediction item sets a direction; a conclusion item ships findings and no verdict; an argument item carries a claim and its support; a labeled source carries figures. Say which of those you have.
3. Find the two places, then the link between them. The deciding evidence is a sentence of the passage and, where there are two sources, a line of the second one. Put your finger on both and say the link out loud: this figure, explained by that sentence.
4. Answer in your own words first. Say the verdict, the trend or the figure before you look at the options. An answer you built from the two places is much harder to talk yourself out of than an option that sounds familiar.
5. Check every option against the join. Name why each wrong one fails — true but off-topic, beyond the text, true of one source only, reversed, or the right figure off the wrong line (Table D). If you cannot name a fault for two options, you have not found the join yet.

The eight worked examples

Each example below is on a short passage of its own, or a pair.

1. Evidence for a prediction — point to what happens next [R.3.1]

The bakery's second van has been off the road since June, so the morning route has been split between the owner's car and a borrowed trailer. The trailer goes back to its owner on the first of November, and the bakery has paid a deposit on a replacement van for that same week. Since August the route has been running forty minutes late.

Question: Which of these is most likely to happen at the start of November?

Worked: Two dates are given and they are the same week: the trailer leaves and the replacement arrives. The direction the account has set — a borrowed vehicle standing in for a van — is what the prediction follows. The likeliest next thing is therefore the route returns to one van of the bakery's own, and the forty minutes of lateness is a fact about the present, not the next thing.

Trap: "The route keeps running forty minutes late" is true of the passage and does not answer what happens next — a prediction is not a restatement of the present situation.

2. Evidence for a conclusion — support it, or refuse it [R.3.1]

The museum opened free on Sundays for a season. Sunday attendance rose by a third, but weekday attendance fell by a tenth, because several members moved their visits from midweek to Sunday. Total attendance for the season was within two percent of the year before.

Question: Which conclusion do these findings support?

Worked: Read the three findings as one movement: Sunday up, midweek down, total flat. A rise moving into a matching fall is a shift, not a gain. The conclusion the findings carry is the free Sunday moved visits rather than adding them, and the members' switch is the sentence that explains it.

Trap: "Free admission brought in visitors who had never come" goes beyond the text — a claim of new visitors is exactly what the weekday fall and the flat total refuse. The evidence is real; the conclusion is wider than it.

3. Compare two passages — the shared point and the split [R.3.2]

Passage A: The footbridge over the cut has been closed since the spring flood shifted one of its piers. The works committee asked for a temporary span by the end of October, and volunteers have offered to build the approach ramps themselves.

Passage B: The engineer's report says the shifted pier must be re-set before any span is laid across it, and that the re-setting cannot be done in the four weeks before the cut's winter flow, which starts in November. A temporary span can be laid in a single dry week — but only after the pier is fixed.

Question: Which point do both accounts share?

Worked: Both accounts are working towards the same thing — a temporary span is how the bridge reopens: A asks for it, B says it can be laid. That is the shared point. Where they part is when: A wants it by the end of October, B says nothing can be spanned until the pier is fixed, and the water will not allow that in the four weeks before winter.

Trap: "The bridge can reopen by the end of October" is the one-source-only choice — it is Passage A's ask, and Passage B's timing is what makes it fail.

4. Theme in two passages — the idea both carry [R.3.2]

Passage A: The orchard on the corner was planted by people who knew they would not eat from it. Eleven of the fourteen trees were grafted from a nursery's oldest stock, and the oldest of them takes nine years to give a full crop.

Passage B: Our class pruned the corner orchard this year and left the ladder in the shed for whoever comes next. The teacher who started the plot retired before the first apple set, and she still walks past in the autumn to see how it is doing.

Question: Which idea do both passages express?

Worked: Both passages give details whose point is the same: work done for someone who comes later — the planters who will not eat from the trees, the class that leaves the ladder, the teacher who started a plot she would not see crop. The idea both carry is care for a long horizon, and every detail in both texts is doing that work.

Trap: "Both passages are about caring for trees" names the topic the two texts share, not the idea they express. A theme is what the details are working for, never the subject word that appears in both.

5. Evaluate an argument — judge the claim by its evidence [R.3.3]

The shop's manager says the self-checkout lane should stay, because the lane rang up 1,800 items in its first month and the queue at the staffed counter dropped by a quarter. The lane has been open for one month, and for part of every shift it has been watched by one of the two cashiers.

Question: Which finding would most weaken the manager's reasoning?

Worked: Find the claim (the lane should stay), then the support (items rang up, the counter queue fell), then the link the support needs: that the shop's traffic held up while the lane did the work. The weakening finding is the one that breaks that link with an alternative cause: "the shop's total customer count fell by a quarter that month" — a queue that shrinks while the shop empties says nothing about the lane. Two traps sit on either side of it. The passage's own last sentence (the lane is staffed by a cashier for part of every shift) is a question about the evidence, not a finding that weakens the claim. And "the staffed counter rang up a quarter fewer items than the month before" is not a weakener at all: traffic moving from the counter to the lane is exactly how the lane shortens the counter queue.

Trap: "The lane rang up more items than the shop projected" is on the claim's side — it strengthens, and it cannot be the answer to a weakening question however well it fits the story.

6. Judge the evidence — can it carry the conclusion? [R.3.3]

The club says its spring litter-pick keeps the towpath clear for boaters. The club's log shows forty bags collected along the towpath in March, a dozen of them from the stretch beside the lock. The lock is the busiest mooring on the canal. The club also bought new gloves this year.

Question: Which detail does not bear on the club's claim?

Worked: The claim is about clearing the towpath. Walk the details against it: forty bags collected is the claim's own evidence; a dozen from the stretch beside the lock says where nearly a third of the work was done. The gloves are about the club's budget, and no amount of gloves clears a path. The gloves are the detail that does not bear on the claim.

Trap: "The lock is the busiest mooring on the canal" is the tempting wrong answer because it never mentions litter — but it ties the dozen bags to where the boaters actually are, so it does bear on "clear for boaters". The gloves touch neither the path nor the boaters.

7. Integrate two sources — the note and the table together [R.3.4]

The co-op fires the kiln on Saturdays, and the co-op's March note records that the third Saturday was left cold while the gas valve was replaced.

The kiln's firing log — hours run, by firing, this March

• Firing 1 — 6
• Firing 2 — 5
• Firing 3 — 0

Question: Which line of the log does the co-op's note explain?

Worked: Neither source answers alone. The note gives a reason with no firing number attached; the log gives a line with no reason — the only line that reads zero. The join is the zero line: the note's cold Saturday is Firing 3. Read one source only and you have a reason with no place to put it, or a number with no explanation.

Trap: "Firing 1 — 6" is the largest figure in the log and answers a question nobody asked (wrong-line-or-unit); "the kiln ran for eleven hours this March" is a total you worked out while the question asked which line the note explains.

8. Evaluate a visual source — read the line, not your memory [R.3.4]

The ferry's crossings — passengers carried, by crossing, Easter weekend

• 06:40 — 88
• 09:00 — 141
• 11:20 — 152
• 14:10 — 96

Question: What is the difference between the busiest crossing and the quietest one?

Worked: Work only from the four printed figures. The busiest is 152 (11:20); the quietest is 88 (06:40); the difference is 64. The label says crossings, and the unit is passengers — both are part of the answer, and reading the value off the wrong line is the whole game here.

Trap: 141 is a true figure from the log and it is neither the busiest nor the quietest (wrong-line-or-unit); an option reporting the total (477) answers a question about the weekend, not about the gap between two crossings.

The traps, collected

Each trap below is the one the named practice item sets.

• The line that is true but off-topic. A detail that really is in the text, offered as the answer to a different question — a very common wrong choice in this bank (r3-004, r3-009, r3-017).
• The claim beyond the text. A conclusion wider than the findings, or a cause the text never claims (r3-045, r3-007, r3-025).
• The one-source answer to a two-source question. True of the passage and false, or absent, in the labeled source — or true of Passage A and refused by Passage B (r3-041, r3-081, r3-085).
• The reversed fact. The text's own number or direction turned around, which reads smoothly because every word is familiar (r3-014, r3-060, r3-063).
• The right figure off the wrong line. A figure that is genuinely in the source, read into the line the question did not name (r3-093, r3-099, r3-103).
• The verdict the findings refuse. A conclusion with a wider reach than the evidence carries (r3-053, r3-057, r3-058).
• The premise nobody wrote down. On an assumption item the key is not in the passage at all — it is the thing the reasoning had to take for granted (r3-054, r3-059, r3-064).
• The counter-finding that helps the claim. On a "which finding would weaken" stem, choices include findings that are about something else, and findings whose direction is the claim's own (r3-055). Read the stem's verb before the options.

Answer-choice strategies: three moves for when the answer will not come

1. Say the join out loud. "The log shows zero on Firing 3 because the note says the third Saturday was cold." If your sentence needs a word the sources do not support — always, every, will — the option you are holding is the one that goes beyond the text.
2. Name the fault before you choose. Go through the two options you are left with and say why one fails: true but off-topic, beyond the text, one source only, reversed, or the wrong line. An option you can fault is an option you can leave.
3. Re-read the question's last five words. A question that ends "in the labeled source" is not the same question as one that ends "in the passage", and "which conclusion does the passage support" is not "which conclusion does the passage refuse". A common miss on this topic is the right answer to a slightly different question.

How to practice this

• Practice by procedure first, then mix. Start with blocks of one procedure to learn the method — the sources change, the question does not — then mix procedures, because switching between question types is what the test asks and what makes the method stick.
• Answer before you look. Write your own verdict, trend or figure in the fewest words, then compare it to the options. Comparing wording first is what makes a distractor feel convincing.
• Keep a list of the faults you keep falling for. If most of your misses are "true but off-topic", the fix is step 5 of the method, not more reading.
• Time yourself across a set of ten. Reading is 55 minutes for the section's 45 questions (39 of them scored), so about a minute and a quarter a question; an item that takes three minutes is costing you a question you would have got.

Where to go next

• Next topic — Numbers and algebra
• The rest of the section — Key ideas and details and Craft and structure.

This topic sits inside the Reading section and carries ATI's published 10% of the exam and 15 of the section's 39 scored items — the blueprint's own split.