Read them with your child, then find the line of the text that proves each answer and the trap it sets.
Practice test 1 is free. No card needed.
Reading Comprehension checks how closely your child reads, not what they already know. These 8 worked questions cover a story and an information text, before the test on 6 March 2027 in Perth, Bunbury and Albany.
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.
Reading Comprehension is the first test of the morning, before the writing. The texts can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama, with diagrams, tables, charts or maps. Everything your child needs is printed on the paper, so no special subject knowledge is needed.
So the skill is going back to the text, not remembering it or knowing the topic. Supervisors can't explain a question or say what a word means, so working out a hard word from the sentence around it is part of the test.
Children in Year 5 now sit it on 6 March 2027 in Perth metro, Bunbury and Albany, for Year 7 entry in 2028.
| On the day | |
|---|---|
| Questions | 35, multiple choice |
| Time | 35 minutes |
| Options | 4 for each question, A to D |
| Answers | Shaded on paper, in pencil |
| Texts | fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama, with diagrams, tables, charts or maps |
| Wrong answers | no marks taken off for wrong answers |
Each question shows the answer and the working. Read each passage with your child, then ask them to point to the line that proves the answer.
We wrote these for this page, to the Department's format. They are not from any real test, and none appears in our Practice tests.
Four questions on a short story about a young cornet player just before a solo in the park. Read them together and talk through each answer.
Ruby had practised the eight bars so often that she could hear them in the hum of the fridge. Even so, when the band filed onto the rotunda in the park and she saw the crowd spread across the grass on picnic rugs, the notes seemed to slide out of her head like water through a gutter.
She sat at the end of the second row, where the cornets always sat, and fixed her eyes on the music stand. The paper fluttered in the breeze. She pinned it with a peg from her pocket, the way Mr Kowalczyk had shown her in her first week, eighteen months ago, when she had been too small to reach the stand without a cushion.
The first two pieces went by in a blur of marching rhythms. Then the bandmaster lowered his baton, and the park went quiet in that particular way that meant people were waiting.
Ruby lifted her cornet. Her lips felt as dry as paper. She glanced up and found Mr Kowalczyk watching, not her, but the drummer, as though nothing unusual were about to happen at all. It was such an ordinary look that something in her chest loosened.
She played. The first note wobbled, and she heard it wobble, and she kept going anyway. By the fourth bar the sound had steadied and grown, rolling out over the rugs and the gum trees and the café on the corner. When she lowered the cornet, a toddler near the front clapped before anyone else, and then everyone did.
Afterwards, packing up, she asked Mr Kowalczyk why he hadn't looked at her during the solo.
"Why would I watch a thing I already knew would be fine?" he said, and went to help with the drum.
Why did Ruby put a peg on her music?
Answer: C
Answer: C
Find the sentence about the peg and read the one before it. The paper 'fluttered in the breeze', so she pinned it down. Option A is tempting, but Mr Kowalczyk showed her this trick in her first week, eighteen months earlier, not right before the solo.
'the notes seemed to slide out of her head like water through a gutter.' This comparison suggests that Ruby
Answer: B
Answer: B
Ask what water running through a gutter is like: fast and impossible to hold on to. Seeing the crowd made the music she knew seem to drain away, which is nerves. Option C is wrong because the first sentence says she had practised so often she heard the music in the fridge's hum.
Why did something in Ruby's chest 'loosen' when she saw Mr Kowalczyk watching the drummer?
Answer: A
Answer: A
Look at the words right before: 'It was such an ordinary look.' Because he acted as if nothing unusual was happening, the solo stopped feeling so huge and she relaxed. Option B is tempting, but the ending shows he had not forgotten: he 'already knew' the solo would be fine.
What does Mr Kowalczyk's answer at the end of the story reveal?
Answer: C
Answer: C
Read his words closely: he 'already knew' it would be fine, so he trusted her before she played a note. Option B is the common trap: he says the solo would be fine, not that it was easy, and the story shows it was hard for Ruby. Nothing suggests he was annoyed (D).
Four more on a non-fiction passage about the stromatolites of Shark Bay. They get harder as they go: the last asks your child to follow a chain of causes through one paragraph. The working shows each link in that chain.
At first glance, the lumpy grey mounds in the shallows of Hamelin Pool, in Western Australia's Shark Bay, look like nothing more than rocks. Visitors who walk out along the boardwalk sometimes wonder what all the fuss is about. Yet these mounds, called stromatolites, are among the most remarkable structures on Earth, because they are alive, or at least their surfaces are.
Each stromatolite is built by communities of microbes, living things too small to see without a microscope. The microbes produce a sticky film. Grains of sand and sediment washed in by the tide become trapped in this film, and the microbes slowly grow up through the new layer to reach the sunlight they need. Layer by layer, a mound forms. The process is extraordinarily slow: a stromatolite may grow less than half a millimetre in a year, so a mound the height of a school ruler may have taken many hundreds of years to build.
Stromatolites were once common in shallow seas around the world. Today they survive in only a few places, and Hamelin Pool holds some of the best examples. The reason is the water. A bank of sand and seagrass at the entrance to the pool slows the flow of water from the open ocean, and the hot sun evaporates the shallows, leaving the pool about twice as salty as ordinary sea water. Few of the snails and other grazing animals that feed on microbes can survive in such conditions, so the builders are left in peace.
Scientists value these mounds for another reason. Fossil stromatolites billions of years old are among the earliest evidence of life on Earth, and the oxygen produced by ancient microbes like these helped make the air breathable for the animals that came later. Standing on the boardwalk, then, a visitor is looking at something very like the first chapter of life's story.
What is the main idea of the passage?
Answer: A
Answer: A
A main idea must cover the whole passage, not one paragraph. Option A links the opening (they look like rocks), the middle (how they live and survive) and the ending (early life). Option B is true, but it is only a detail from the third paragraph explaining why they survive there.
Which word best describes the writer's attitude towards the stromatolites?
Answer: C
Answer: C
Look for the writer's own describing words: 'among the most remarkable structures on Earth' and 'the first chapter of life's story'. These show admiration. Option A is tempting because the passage mentions people wondering what the fuss is about, but that is the visitors' reaction, which the writer then corrects.
Why does the writer finish the passage with the picture of a visitor 'standing on the boardwalk'?
Answer: B
Answer: B
Compare the first and last paragraphs: both place a visitor on the boardwalk. At the start the visitor wonders 'what all the fuss is about'; by the end, the passage has given the answer, 'the first chapter of life's story'. Option A sounds sensible, but the passage never says the boardwalk protects the mounds.
Based on the passage, which change would most likely put the stromatolites of Hamelin Pool at risk?
Answer: D
Answer: D
Follow the chain in paragraph three: the bank slows ocean water and the sun evaporates the shallows, so the pool stays salty enough to keep grazing snails out. A channel would let ocean water in, making the pool less salty, so grazers could survive and eat the microbes. A and B would keep the pool salty, and snails outside (C) still could not survive inside.
How you go through the working matters more than how fast you finish. Eight questions talked through slowly teach more than a page rushed.
Read it aloud and ask your child what it's asking and which facts matter. That's the habit the real test rewards.
For every answer, your child points to the words in the text that back it up.
Each explanation names the tempting wrong option. Ask your child why it looks right: that's the trap to watch for.
Each question links to its skill page, with a method and three more worked questions.
Most wrong options here are true somewhere in the text, or sound sensible, but don't answer this question. Go through these once you have read the questions together: each has a simple check.
Right detail, wrong moment: Mr Kowalczyk showed Ruby the peg in her first week, not just before the solo. Check when it happened.
An answer the text has already ruled out: Ruby heard the music in the fridge's hum, so she can't have 'never learned' it.
Reading more into the words than they say: Mr Kowalczyk says the solo would be fine, not easy. Stay close to the words.
Taking a true detail for the main idea: The salty pool is in one paragraph only. A main idea covers the whole text.
Mixing up whose view it is: The visitors wonder what the fuss is about; the writer admires the mounds. Tone questions ask about the writer.
Sensible, but not in the text: The passage never says the boardwalk protects the mounds. If your child can't point to the line, it's wrong.
Each question belongs to one skill. The real test can also use poems and visual texts, which these passages don't, so read those skill pages too.
| Skill | Questions on this page |
|---|---|
| ASET finding details | 1 |
| ASET word meaning in context | 2 |
| ASET inference | 3, 4, 8 |
| ASET main idea | 5 |
| ASET tone | 6 |
| ASET author's purpose | 7 |
| ASET missing sentences | See its page |
| ASET poetry | See its page |
| ASET cartoons and visual texts | See its page |
| ASET comparing texts | See its page |
Each skill page explains a method and works through three more questions. How the whole test works is on our page about ASET reading comprehension.
Eight questions show the types. A full test shows whether your child can keep reading closely for 35 minutes, across several kinds of text, which is a different skill.
Practice test 1 has Reading Comprehension at its real length and time, with every answer explained. Afterwards you'll see results by skill, so you know which kinds of question cost the most marks.
No. We wrote them ourselves, to the format the Department publishes, with 4 options for each question.
Past ASET papers are not published. Our ASET practice test page links to the Department's free Practice ASET, in 4 parts.
In a full Practice test, not with these. Read these worked explanations together and talk through each answer. When you time a full test, the handbook suggests about a minute per question.
Guess. On the ASET there are no marks taken off for wrong answers. When unsure, the handbook says to narrow it to two of the four options by ruling out obvious wrong answers.
Not a lot. The handbook says the ASET is not curriculum-based and advises preparation in moderation, because most forms of preparation have limits. Our guide on how to prepare for the GATE test sets out a calm plan.
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.