Some questions cannot be asked alone. “What does the author mean by ‘a fragile peace’?” only makes sense next to the paragraph the phrase came from — and that is exactly the situation passage based questions in Pear Assessment are built for. A passage-based item bundles a stimulus — a reading, an image, a video, a document — with a set of questions that refer to it, so students work from evidence instead of answering in a vacuum.
State tests lean heavily on this format, which makes it essential practice for ELA, science, and social studies. This guide shows how to build passage-based questions in Pear Assessment, how to attach documents and other stimuli, and how to design the questions so they measure reading and reasoning rather than hunting-and-pecking.
What a passage-based question actually is
In Pear Assessment, a passage-based question is a grouped item. You create a passage — the shared stimulus — and then add individual questions (called parts) beneath it. Students see the passage alongside the questions and move between them as they answer. The parts can mix question types: a multiple-choice question on the main idea, a drag-and-drop on vocabulary in context, a short answer asking for textual evidence.
The stimulus itself is flexible. It can be:
- A written text you type or paste in — an excerpt, poem, article, or primary source.
- An image or diagram, such as a food web, a map, or a historical photograph.
- A video clip students watch before or while answering.
- A document you add as the source material (more on that below).
Because the parts share one stimulus, the whole group behaves like the stimulus sets on state assessments — which is precisely why it is worth building them deliberately rather than uploading loose questions that happen to mention a text.
Building your first passage-based question
The workflow in the authoring tools follows a simple logic: passage first, questions second, polish last.
Start in the item bank’s question creation flow and choose the passage-based option. Give the passage a clear title — something your future self will recognize in search results, like “Grade 5 — The Water Cycle Article, Set A.” Then add your stimulus content. If you are pasting text from another source, paste it as plain text and re-apply headings, bold, or lists with the editor; pasted formatting from web pages and documents often carries stray styling that looks fine on your screen and strange in the student player.
Next, add parts. For each part, choose the question type that fits what you are measuring — the full range of types is catalogued in our guide to Pear Assessment question types. Write the question so it explicitly anchors to the passage: “According to paragraph 3…” and “In the diagram…” are small phrases that prevent big confusion. Set the correct answer, points, and — if your workflow uses them — the standard and depth-of-knowledge level for each part while you are there; tagging at creation time is far faster than tagging a bank of finished items later.
Before saving, preview the item exactly as students will see it. Check the passage length against the question column: on smaller screens, very long passages force constant scrolling, which taxes working memory. If the passage is long, consider splitting it into two passages with their own question sets.
how to add documents to pear assessment
Teachers regularly ask how to add documents to Pear Assessment — a PDF worksheet, a scanned primary source, a lab handout — and use them as the basis for questions. The passage editor is the main route: documents and files can be attached to or embedded in the stimulus area of a passage-based item, and media such as images and video can be added alongside text. Once the document is part of the passage, you build your parts underneath it just as you would with a typed text.
A few practical habits make document-based items behave well:
- Check the rendering, not just the upload. Open the student preview and actually read the document there. Scanned pages that look crisp in a PDF viewer can render small on a Chromebook. If the text is tiny, crop the document to the section students need or retype the key excerpt.
- Keep the needed portion short. Students should work from the relevant page or paragraph, not a twelve-page file. Trim to what the questions use.
- Mind the source and permissions. Use documents your school has the right to distribute, and prefer excerpts over whole commercial texts.
- Give the item a searchable name. Months later, “March — Doc-Based Set, Industrial Revolution” will find itself; “Passage 12” will not.
The same document-attachment habits apply when you build from the Pear Assessment item bank: items you author with documents live in your library alongside bank items, ready to drop into any test.
Writing questions that actually use the passage
The classic flaw of passage-based sets is the question that ignores its passage. If a student can answer correctly without reading — from general knowledge or common sense — the item measures neither reading nor the text. A quick self-test: cover the passage and try the questions. Any you can answer confidently should be rewritten or cut.
Strong passage questions demand evidence. Ask which sentence best supports a conclusion, what a word means in this context, how the diagram changes the claim in paragraph 2, or what the author does in the final section and why. Follow the principles in our guide on how to write good assessment questions — one idea per question, distractors built from plausible misreadings — and add one more: wrong options should often be statements that are true in general but not supported by this passage, or true details from the passage attached to the wrong question. Those distractors catch skimmers precisely.
Sequence the parts with intent. Open with a literal question that sends students into the text, build toward inference and analysis, and close — if you include one — with an extended response that pulls the whole passage together. That staircase mirrors how strong readers actually process a text.
One more design note: tell students the passage stays available. Novice test-takers often assume they must memorize the text on first reading and rush. A single line of instruction — “You can scroll back to the passage at any time; use it” — changes behavior immediately, and citing the text becomes a habit rather than an accident.
A worked example: one passage, five parts
To see the pattern concretely, imagine a Grade 7 science passage: a 350-word article about a school garden experiment in which two groups of tomato plants received different amounts of water. The article includes a small results table.
Part 1 (multiple choice, literal): “According to the article, how often was Group B watered?” This sends students into the text and checks basic retrieval. Part 2 (multiple choice, vocabulary in context): “In paragraph 2, the word ‘sparse’ describes plants that are…” — answerable only from context, not a dictionary memory. Part 3 (drag and drop, data reading): students sort the results-table values into “most growth” to “least growth,” proving they can read the stimulus data. Part 4 (multiple choice, inference): “Which sentence best explains why Group A’s plants wilted in week 3?” — the distractors are true facts from the article attached to the wrong week, catching skimmers. Part 5 (short answer, analysis): “Using evidence from the article, explain whether the experiment fairly tested the effect of water.” This is the staircase top: claim, evidence, reasoning.
Notice what the set measures as a whole: retrieval, vocabulary, data literacy, inference, and argument — five distinct skills against one shared text, each scored separately. That is the diagnostic richness a passage set can deliver, and it took one good stimulus to build.
Scoring, standards, and reuse
Score parts individually rather than all-or-nothing wherever the platform allows it: a student who nails the vocabulary and inference items but misses the main idea has given you precise information, and a single lump score would bury it. Tagging each part to its standard at build time means your reports can separate “cannot find the main idea” from “cannot infer,” which lead to very different next lessons.
Build passages as reusable assets. A well-made passage set on the water cycle serves your class this year, your colleague’s class next semester, and next year’s review week. Save final versions in your shared or district library where your plan allows, and note the grade band and standard in the title. Passage sets are among the most labor-intensive items to author — treat them like the investments they are.
Finally, check accessibility before assigning: passages work with the platform’s read-aloud and display supports, so confirm the stimulus behaves — a scanned image of text, for instance, cannot be read aloud the way real text can. Where a student needs the passage read to them, real typed text is the safer stimulus than a picture of text.
The official support library walks through the same creation flow with screenshots in its guide to creating passage-based questions, which is worth keeping open during your first build.
FAQ
How long should a passage be?
Match length to grade and purpose: a few paragraphs for elementary students, up to a full page or two for high school stimulus sets. If students spend more time scrolling than thinking, shorten it or split it into two passages.
Can a passage include more than one stimulus?
Yes — passages can combine text with images, video, or documents. Just keep the combination purposeful: every element should be needed by at least one question.
Do passage-based questions work for subjects besides ELA?
Absolutely. Science lab write-ups and diagrams, social studies primary sources, math word-problem scenarios, and world-language readings all fit the format well.
My students finish passage sets at very different speeds. What helps?
Part of that spread is reading speed, which is real data — but you can soften the logistics. Keep passages focused, avoid splitting a needed paragraph across a scroll boundary, and pilot the set on a colleague or a single period first while timing it. If the strongest readers need ten minutes, plan roughly double for the class, and set expectations out loud so slower readers do not panic and skim.
Conclusion
Passage based questions in Pear Assessment turn isolated items into evidence-based sets that mirror real state tests. Build the passage carefully, attach documents thoughtfully, preview as a student, and write parts that cannot be answered without the text. Do that, and your stimulus sets will measure reading and reasoning — not luck. Your students will also walk into state testing already fluent in the format.