Find the comparisons in the poem, then ask your child what each one adds.
Practice test 1 is free. No card needed.
Poetry questions ask what a poem's images and comparisons suggest, and how its opening and ending connect. Children in Year 7 now meet them in Year 8, in the exam expected in June 2027.
Checked by the SelectiveReady team on 12 October 2026 · Updated 27 October 2026 · How we check facts
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ACER says Reading tests finding information in texts, and linking, interpreting, reflecting on and judging their ideas. We use a poem here to show interpreting: a short poem packs a lot of meaning into a few images.
The questions below are ours and share one poem, Low Tide, about rock pools when the sea goes out. Each one shows the answer and the working, so read them together. For each question, go back to the exact image it quotes and ask what it makes your child picture.
The sea has drawn back like a breath held in, leaving the rock shelf bare as a kitchen bench after everyone has left the table. In the pools, small lives keep house: a crab rehearses its sideways argument, anemones close their fists on nothing, a periwinkle writes one slow sentence across the green page of the weed. The gulls arrive like inspectors, heads tilted, unimpressed by all of it. I crouch, and the water shows me my own face laid over the shells, a stranger who has come to look at someone else's house. Far out, the sea is turning in its sleep. Soon it will remember where it left all this, and come back, and pull the covers up.
What does the poet suggest about the gulls by saying they 'arrive like inspectors'?
Answer: C
Answer: C
Think about what an inspector does: looks things over and judges them. The next line backs this up: 'heads tilted, unimpressed by all of it'. Option D might come from imagining a real job for the gulls, but nothing in the poem mentions cleaning.
Throughout the poem, the rock pools are described as if they were
Answer: B
Answer: B
Collect the comparisons that keep returning: 'kitchen bench', 'keep house', 'someone else's house', 'pull the covers up'. Together they picture the pools as a home. Option A is tempting because the periwinkle 'writes one slow sentence' on a 'page', but that is a single image, not the idea that runs through the poem.
The poem opens with the sea 'drawn back like a breath held in' and closes with it 'turning in its sleep'. Together, these images suggest that low tide is
Answer: D
Answer: D
Put the two images together: a held breath and sleep both describe a pause, not an ending, and the last lines say the sea 'will remember' and 'come back', which rules out B. Option A may come from the anemones closing 'on nothing', but the creatures calmly 'keep house', and the sea returns to 'pull the covers up', which is caring, not dangerous.
Picture first, then the comparisons, then the pattern. Each pass gives your child something new to test the options against.
These steps are ours, drawn from the working in the answers above.
Read once for the picture and once for the comparisons. A short poem is quick to read again.
Look for like and as, and for things described as if they were something else, such as a crab that 'rehearses'.
An inspector looks things over and judges them. That is what the poem says about the gulls.
Images that come back across the poem show its big idea.
This poem answers its opening in its last lines. Put the two images side by side.
Each trap below comes from a wrong option in the questions above. Ask your child which one looked right at first, then ask which words in the poem rule it out.
Read a short poem aloud together each week. Ask, "What picture does this line put in your head?"
Turn a comparison around. If the gulls are inspectors, what is the rock pool? Who would they be inspecting?
Ask your child to write a line or two comparing something at home to something else, then explain what the comparison shows.
The Victorian Department of Education says the exam assesses aptitude for higher order thinking, problem-solving, reasoning, creative thinking, comprehension, interpretation and applying known concepts. Interpretation is on that list, and a poem asks for it in very few words.
In the exam, Reading shares 55 minutes with Verbal Reasoning. Three questions show the method; a full sitting shows whether your child can slow down for images while the clock runs. Start with Practice test 1: one full practice test with results, with a free account.
Afterwards you'll see results by skill, so you know where the marks went. For more passages with worked answers, see VIC selective entry reading questions, or read about VIC word meaning questions, where words carry images too.
Practice test 1 marks every answer and shows results by skill: what your child already does well and the three skills to work on next.
Practise for the real test
Practice test 1 is free. Then packs from A$109 for 12 months, or A$9 a week, per exam.