Teach your child to read both sides of the gap before reading the options.
Practice test 1 is free. No card needed.
A missing-sentence question asks which sentence fits a gap, so your child has to follow how the ideas link. The handbook doesn't list question types, so treat this as practice before the Year 6 test on 6 March 2027.
Checked by the SelectiveReady team on 12 October 2026 · Updated 27 October 2026 · How we check facts
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The Department's handbook says Reading Comprehension texts may be fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama, with diagrams, tables, charts or maps. It doesn't describe the kinds of question, so treat gap questions as a way to learn a skill, not a preview of the paper.
These three are ours, on one information text about seed banks. To choose the sentence for each gap, your child has to follow how the ideas link up.
Each shows the answer and the working. Read the paragraph aloud with a wrong option in the gap. A sentence that doesn't belong sounds like a jump, and hearing that jump teaches more than any explanation.
Every year, plant species around the world are lost to fire, flood, disease and changes in climate. Once the last plants of a species are gone, they cannot be brought back. Seed banks are one way that scientists try to stop this from happening.
A seed bank is a store of seeds kept in carefully controlled conditions. [1] Most seeds are naturally built to wait: inside each one is a tiny plant and a supply of food, sealed in a tough coat, ready to grow when conditions are right.
Before seeds are stored, they are cleaned, counted and dried until very little water is left inside them. [2] Once dried, they are sealed in packets or jars and placed in freezers at around minus 20 degrees Celsius. In these conditions, the seeds of many species can survive for decades, and some for far longer.
Some seed banks are built to survive almost anything. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is dug deep into a mountain on a remote Arctic island, where the frozen rock stays cold even if the power fails. Seed banks from all over the world send spare copies of their food-crop seeds there for safekeeping, like a spare key left with a trusted neighbour.
Stored seeds are not left untouched forever. Every so often, scientists take out a few and try to sprout them, to check that the rest are still alive. [3]
The most important use of a seed bank is one that everyone hopes will rarely be needed. When a species becomes rare in the wild, seeds from the bank can be grown into plants and returned to the places where they once grew.
Which sentence best fills gap [1]?
Answer: B
Answer: B
Read the sentences on both sides of the gap. After it, seeds are 'built to wait', ready to grow later. The gap must explain the bank's job of keeping seeds alive while they wait, which B does. C contradicts 'built to wait', and A contradicts the idea of storing seeds at all.
Which sentence best fills gap [2]?
Answer: A
Answer: A
The gap sits between drying the seeds and freezing them, so the best sentence explains why drying comes before freezing. A does this. C contradicts the next sentence, which says the dried seeds are sealed and frozen. D is the reverse of the paragraph's point.
Which sentence best fills gap [3]?
Answer: D
Answer: D
The gap ends a paragraph about testing stored seeds, so it should say what the test leads to. D does. A is tempting, but the last paragraph says seeds go back to the wild only when a species becomes rare. C is wrong because Svalbard's copies are kept for safekeeping, like a spare key, and B contradicts 'every so often'.
Read both sides of the gap, decide what the missing sentence has to do, and only then look at the options. Working out the gap's job first stops an on-topic option from looking right.
Read the sentence before and the sentence after. The missing one has to link them.
Explain, give a reason or say what happens next? Between drying and freezing seeds, it must say why drying comes first.
Cross out, in pencil, any option that the following sentence contradicts.
At the end of a paragraph, the sentence should finish its idea, not start a new one.
Each trap matches a wrong option in the gap questions above. Talk them through once you have read all three together, and ask which sentence gave the trap away.
An option the next sentence rules out: 'After drying, the seeds are planted out in pots' can't fill the second gap. The next sentence says the dried seeds are sealed and frozen.
Borrowing from another paragraph: returning seeds to the wild belongs to the last paragraph, and only when a species becomes rare. It can't end the paragraph about testing seeds.
On topic, but no link: 'Flowers come in many different colours and shapes' is about plants, but it connects to nothing around the first gap.
Any paragraph can become a gap question, so use what your child already reads. Talking about why a sentence fits is the useful part.
Three worked gaps show the method. A full Reading Comprehension test, 35 questions in 35 minutes, shows whether your child keeps following the thread against the clock.
Practice test 1 is free, and the results by skill show which kinds of question cost the most marks. For more, see our ASET reading sample questions and the guide to ASET Reading.
The handbook doesn't say. It describes the texts, not the questions, so we use gaps to teach following a text, which helps with every kind of reading question.
Year 6 children in Perth metro, Bunbury and Albany sit it on 6 March 2027. Dates for regional WA and interstate sittings 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.