Teach your child to find the line first, and to trust it over the answer that sounds likely.
Practice test 1 is free. No card needed.
A finding-details question asks what the text actually says, so the right answer is a line your child can point to. Children in Year 5 now meet them in the ASET on 6 March 2027.
Checked by the SelectiveReady team on 12 October 2026 · Updated 27 October 2026 · How we check facts
Independent. Not affiliated with the WA Department of Education.
It asks for something the passage states: a time, a place, a reason or a list. The answer is always on the page, even when another option sounds more like what your child already knows.
These three are ours, on one information text about the superb lyrebird, and they get harder as they go. Each shows the answer and the working, so read them together.
In the damp forests of south-eastern Australia lives a bird that can sound like almost anything. The superb lyrebird, a brown, pheasant-sized bird with powerful legs, is famous for copying the calls of other birds so accurately that it can be hard to tell the copy from the real thing. A single male may perform the songs of kookaburras, whipbirds, rosellas and a dozen other species in one long, unbroken stream. Lyrebirds kept in wildlife parks have even been recorded copying car alarms, camera shutters and the whine of a chainsaw.
Singing is mainly the work of the males, and it is loudest in winter, the breeding season. Each male clears several small patches of forest floor and scrapes up low mounds of soil to stand on. From these stages he sings and dances, throwing his long tail forward over his head until it forms a shimmering silver veil. The tail is made of sixteen feathers, and two of them, curved at the ends, give the bird its name: together they are shaped like a lyre, an ancient stringed instrument.
The female does all the work of raising the young. She builds a large domed nest of sticks, often on a stump or a rocky ledge, and lays a single egg. The chick hatches after about seven weeks and stays in the nest for several weeks more.
Lyrebirds spend much of every day scratching through leaf litter with their strong feet, searching for worms, beetles and other small creatures. In doing so, they turn over a great deal of soil, which helps fallen leaves break down and may even reduce the fuel available for bushfires. For this reason, the lyrebird is sometimes called a "forest gardener".
According to the passage, when is the male lyrebird's singing loudest?
Answer: A
Answer: A
Scan for the word 'loudest'. The second paragraph says singing 'is loudest in winter, the breeding season'. Spring (B) is a common guess because many birds breed then, but the passage clearly names winter, and the answer must come from the text.
Which of these sounds is NOT mentioned in the passage as one that lyrebirds have copied?
Answer: C
Answer: C
With a NOT question, check every option against the text and cross out the ones you find. Kookaburras, camera shutters and car alarms are all listed in the first paragraph. A dog barking is never mentioned, so C is the answer, even though it seems like a sound a lyrebird might copy.
Which statement is fully supported by the passage?
Answer: D
Answer: D
Each option is partly right, so check every part. The egg takes about seven weeks to hatch and the chick then stays 'several weeks more', so D is fully supported. A is wrong because 'the female does all the work', B because the two feathers form a lyre 'together', and C because they scratch for food; breaking down leaves is a side effect.
The handbook says everything your child needs to answer is printed on the paper, so no special subject knowledge is needed. So as you read the working together, don't just explain the right answer: ask your child to find the sentence that proves it.
Find the place in the text first, then read the options against it. Going in that order means the text decides, not memory or a good guess.
Choose a word in the question that will also be in the text, like 'loudest', and scan for it.
Read the sentence with the key word, and the one after it. The detail may finish in the next sentence.
Find each option in the text and cross it out in pencil. The one left standing is the answer.
When an option makes two claims, both must be in the text. One wrong part makes the whole option wrong.
Each trap below comes from one of the worked questions. Look at them once you have read the questions together, and ask which trap might catch your child.
A likely guess instead of the text: plenty of birds breed in spring, so spring feels right. The passage says winter, and the passage wins.
Missing the NOT: a dog barking sounds like something a lyrebird could copy. The question asks which sound isn't in the passage, so that's the answer.
Partly true: each option in the last question gets something right. Only the one counting from the day the egg is laid, more than seven weeks in the nest, is true in every part.
When unsure, the handbook suggests your child narrow it to two of the four options by ruling out obvious wrong answers, then check the last options against the text.
Ask questions whose answers your child can point to, and make pointing the rule. It's a small habit, and it's the one this skill rests on.
Three worked explanations show the method. A full Reading Comprehension test has 35 questions in 35 minutes, which shows whether your child keeps checking the text when time is short.
Practice test 1 is free, and the results by skill show whether details are where marks go. Our ASET reading sample questions page has eight more worked questions, and ASET Reading explains the whole test.
Move on and come back. The handbook says to leave its answer space blank and put an asterisk next to the question number, so the question is easy to find again later.
Year 6 children in Perth metro, Bunbury and Albany sit it on 6 March 2027. Regional and interstate dates are on the ASET dates page.
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.