Practice question · SEL-WR-TST-01
The Wrong Bag
At the end of school camp, you grab a backpack that looks exactly like yours. When you open it at home, you find something inside that is definitely not yours.
Begin with: The zip stuck halfway, and that was when I realised this was not my bag.
Write a story about what you find and what happens next.
In your story, you could:
- describe what is inside and why it matters
- show how you feel and what you decide to do
- end by showing how the problem is solved
Read the model response
The zip stuck halfway, and that was when I realised this was not my bag. My bag has a keyring shaped like a pineapple. This one had a tiny brass compass clipped to the strap, and the needle was wobbling as if it was nervous.
I tugged the zip the rest of the way. Inside there were no muddy socks or squashed muesli bars. Instead, there was a notebook with a cracked leather cover, a torch and a folded map of Kookaburra Ridge, the camp we had just come home from. Someone had drawn a red cross beside the old water tank, with three words underneath: "Don't forget Pip."
Who was Pip? A dog? A person? A secret code? My stomach did a slow flip.
I flicked through the notebook. Every page was covered in neat pencil drawings of birds, and each one had a date and a time. On the last page, in rushed writing, it said: "Pip still can't fly. Feed at 7 am and 5 pm. Dad, the box is behind the tank!"
It was Saturday afternoon. Camp had finished that morning. If Pip was a bird, and if nobody knew where the box was, then Pip had not been fed since breakfast.
I sprinted to the kitchen, waving the map like a flag. "Mum! We have to go back to camp. Right now!"
Mum raised one eyebrow, which is never a good sign. But when I showed her the notebook, the eyebrow came down. Forty minutes later, we were bumping along the dirt road to Kookaburra Ridge, the bag on my lap and my heart thudding.
The camp manager, Mr Nguyen, met us at the gate. He looked puzzled until I said the word "Pip". Then he slapped his forehead. "That's my son Minh's bag! He's been caring for a baby magpie with a hurt wing. He left me instructions before he went to his gran's, but I couldn't find them anywhere."
We found Pip in a cardboard box lined with a towel, tucked behind the water tank in the shade. She was fluffy and grey, and she opened her beak so wide I could see right down her throat. She was definitely hungry. Mr Nguyen showed me how to feed her tiny pellets of soaked insect mix with a pair of tweezers. She gulped every single one.
On Monday, Minh rang me to say thank you. He had my bag, of course, pineapple keyring and all. He had been panicking about Pip the whole weekend.
Now I check every zip twice before I leave anywhere. But I also think that sometimes the wrong bag is exactly the right one.