NAPLAN-style Practice Test 1 — Reading (Year 7)
A free NAPLAN (Years 3, 5, 7 and 9) practice paper for Year 7 in the format of the real test: 48 questions in 65 minutes, covering Section A — Texts 1 to 3; Section B — Texts 4 to 6; Section C — Texts 7 and 8. Read each text, then answer the questions. Try every question. Attempt it online — every question is marked instantly and the correct answers are shown at the end.
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At four in the morning, the bakery on Harbour Street was the only lit window in town. Inside, the ovens ticked as they warmed, and flour hung in the air like fine mist.
Nell had been coming here every school holiday since she was seven, but until today her jobs had been small ones: sweeping, stacking trays, writing prices on the chalkboard in her careful, rounded letters. The dough had always belonged to Aunt Rosa.
"Wash your hands," said Aunt Rosa, without looking up. "Then come here."
Nell obeyed, drying each finger so thoroughly that her aunt raised an eyebrow. On the bench sat a great pale mound of dough, soft and faintly sour-smelling, rising under a damp cloth like something asleep.
"Twenty loaves," said Aunt Rosa. "You shape them. I'll watch."
Nell's stomach dropped. She had watched her aunt do this a thousand times — the quick fold, the turn, the firm press of the palm — and it had always looked as easy as breathing. But when she cut the first piece and tried to fold it, the dough clung to her fingers and sagged into a shapeless lump.
"Too much thinking," said Aunt Rosa. "Dough can tell when you're frightened of it."
Nell tried again. And again. By the sixth loaf her hands had begun to find a rhythm, and by the tenth she had stopped holding her breath. The loaves were not perfect. Some leaned sideways like tired old men; one had a seam that refused to close. But they were bread, and she had made them.
Nell glanced up, expecting correction. Instead she saw that her aunt was sitting on the stool by the window, rubbing the knuckles of her right hand with her left, slowly, the way you might soothe a sore animal. Aunt Rosa had never sat down during a morning bake. Not once.
"They'll do," said Aunt Rosa, when the last loaf was on the tray. She said it gruffly, but she was smiling at the floury bench, not at Nell.
At six o'clock, when the first customer pushed open the door, the whole shop smelled of crust and warm air. Nell stood behind the counter, her apron dusted white, and did not trust herself to speak when her aunt told the customer, "The bread's my niece's today. Better get used to it."
Q1. Why does Aunt Rosa raise an eyebrow when Nell dries her hands?
Q2. The dough is described as "rising under a damp cloth like something asleep". This simile suggests the dough is
Q3. What does Aunt Rosa mean when she says, "Dough can tell when you're frightened of it"?
Q4. What does the detail about Aunt Rosa sitting down and rubbing her knuckles suggest?
Q5. Which word in the story tells you how Aunt Rosa said "They'll do"?
Q6. The final sentence of the story suggests that
Walk through a damp gully in the forests of south-eastern Australia on a winter morning and you might hear a kookaburra laugh, a whipbird crack, a rosella chatter and a currawong call — all within a single minute. Look closely, however, and you may discover that every one of those sounds is coming from the same bird.
The superb lyrebird is one of the most remarkable singers on Earth. About the size of a pheasant, it is among the largest songbirds in the world, yet its brown feathers make it easy to overlook. What it lacks in colour it makes up for in voice. Much of a male lyrebird's song is made up of other species' calls, copied so precisely that human listeners are often fooled.
The male's performance is at its peak in winter, the breeding season. He scratches together a low mound of soil on the forest floor, climbs on top and throws his spectacular tail forward over his head so that it shimmers like a silvery veil. Then he sings, sometimes for hours, while females visit to judge the show. Young males are not born knowing these songs. They learn them by listening to older males nearby, and they practise for years before their performances are complete.
Lyrebirds are famous for copying human-made sounds too. There are reports of birds, often ones living close to people, imitating camera shutters, car alarms and even chainsaws. Scientists point out, however, that such cases are unusual. Most wild lyrebirds copy the calls of the birds around them.
The lyrebird is more than an entertainer. As it searches for insects and worms, it rakes the forest floor with its powerful feet, turning over leaf litter and soil. Researchers have found that this constant digging buries fallen leaves, which can reduce the fuel available for bushfires. For this reason, some ecologists describe the lyrebird as an "ecosystem engineer".
Next time you hold an Australian ten-cent coin, look at the bird on the back. It is a male lyrebird with its tail raised — a small reminder of a very big voice.
Q7. What is the main purpose of the first paragraph?
Q8. "What it lacks in colour it makes up for in voice." This sentence means the lyrebird
Q9. Complete the sentence with one word from the text. Young male lyrebirds learn their songs by ________ to older males.
Q10. Why does the writer include the sentence "Scientists point out, however, that such cases are unusual"?
Q11. According to the article, why do some ecologists call the lyrebird an "ecosystem engineer"?
Q12. Which word best describes the writer's attitude towards the lyrebird?
Ten More Minutes
by Ari Mendes, Year 8 student councillor
Picture this: the lunch bell rings, and six hundred students pour into the quadrangle. By the time you have queued at the canteen, found your friends and unwrapped your sandwich, there are barely fifteen minutes left. Then the bell rings again, and it is back to algebra. Is this really the best we can do?
I believe our school should extend lunchtime from forty minutes to fifty. Ten minutes may not sound like much, but it would make a real difference.
First, students need time to move. Health guidelines recommend that young people be physically active for at least an hour every day, yet many of us sit for most of the school day. A longer lunch means a proper game of handball or soccer instead of a rushed five-minute kick.
Second, lunch is when students do the things that do not fit into the timetable. Clubs, band practice, library visits and catching up with teachers all happen at lunch. Last term, the chess club had to stop meeting because members could not finish a game before the bell.
Some people argue that a longer lunch would make the school day longer and that families would not accept a later finishing time. This is a fair concern. However, the extra ten minutes could easily be taken from the morning roll-call period, which most students agree is mostly spent waiting.
When our student council surveyed Year 7 and Year 8 students last month, 212 out of 260 said they did not have enough time to eat and relax at lunch. That is not a small complaint from a few people; it is the voice of the majority.
Ten more minutes. It is a small change that could make our school a happier, healthier place. Surely that is worth it.
Q13. What is the writer's main purpose?
Q14. How does the writer begin the piece?
Q15. Why does the writer mention the chess club?
Q16. How does the writer deal with the argument that the school day would become longer?
Q17. Which of these is a weakness in the survey evidence the writer uses?
Q18. Which best describes the tone of the final paragraph?
For months the sky kept its promises locked,
a miser counting clouds it would not spend.
The dam shrank back into a cracked brown saucer,
the gums stood grey and patient as old men,
and every afternoon the wind came by
to sweep the dust from one side of the paddock to the other,
as if tidying could make up for thirst.
Then, one evening, the west turned the colour of a bruise.
Thunder cleared its throat behind the hills.
The first drops struck the iron roof like thrown coins —
a handful, then a fistful, then a fortune —
and Dad stood on the verandah without his hat,
his face turned up, saying nothing at all.
By morning the creek was talking again,
chattering over stones it had forgotten,
and the whole land smelled of wet earth and beginnings.
Q19. In the first two lines, the sky is compared to a miser, a person who hoards money. This suggests that the sky
Q20. "the gums stood grey and patient as old men". What impression does this line give of the trees?
Q21. In the second stanza, the colour of the evening sky is compared to the colour of a ________. Write the word from the poem.
Q22. How does the line "a handful, then a fistful, then a fortune" connect to the start of the poem?
Q23. Why does Dad stand "without his hat, / his face turned up, saying nothing at all"?
Q24. Which best describes how the mood changes across the three stanzas?
Ada Kerrigan was born in 1921 on a wheat farm in western Victoria. She left school at thirteen to help her family through hard times, and she never went to university. Yet by the end of her long life, scientists from three countries had travelled to sit at her kitchen table and read her notebooks.
It began with a gift. On her tenth birthday, Ada's grandmother gave her a cheap exercise book and a pencil and told her to "write down what the birds are doing". Ada took the instruction seriously. Every morning before milking, she walked to the edge of the swamp behind the house and recorded which birds she saw, how many there were and what the weather was like.
She did not stop. Through droughts, floods, a marriage, three children and the death of her husband, Ada filled notebook after notebook. Neighbours thought her hobby was odd. "What's the point of counting ducks?" one farmer asked. Ada is said to have replied, "I won't know until I've counted them for long enough."
The point became clear in the 1990s. A university researcher studying migratory birds heard about "the lady with the notebooks" and asked to see them. He found sixty-two unbroken years of observations from a single place, a record that is almost impossible to find anywhere. Ada's notes showed that several species were arriving at the swamp earlier each spring than they had in the 1930s, and that some had become much rarer.
Ada was surprised by all the attention. "I only did what Gran told me," she said in a newspaper interview. Her notebooks, now kept in the state library, are still used by researchers today.
Ada Kerrigan died in 2009, aged eighty-eight. The swamp behind her old farmhouse is now a protected wetland, and a walking track there bears her name.
Q25. Why does the writer mention that Ada left school at thirteen and never went to university?
Q26. Which one-word adjective in the third paragraph shows how Ada's neighbours viewed her hobby?
Q27. Ada's reply, "I won't know until I've counted them for long enough", suggests that she
Q28. In the fourth paragraph, the word "unbroken" is closest in meaning to
Q29. According to the text, which of these did Ada's notes show?
Q30. Which word best describes Ada as she is presented in this biography?
Sound is a vibration that travels through the air as a wave. When a jet engine roars or a train rumbles, it pushes air molecules together and pulls them apart in a repeating pattern. These squeezed areas, called compressions, and stretched areas, called rarefactions, travel to your ears. There they make your eardrums vibrate, and your brain interprets the vibrations as sound.
Ordinary headphones reduce outside noise simply by covering your ears with thick padding. This is called passive noise reduction. It works well for higher-pitched sounds such as chatter, but low, rumbling sounds pass through padding much more easily.
Noise-cancelling headphones add a clever second layer of protection. First, tiny microphones built into each ear cup pick up the sound from the surroundings. Next, a small computer chip analyses this sound wave and, within a fraction of a second, produces a new wave that is its mirror image: wherever the original wave has a compression, the new wave has a rarefaction, and the other way around. Finally, the speaker inside the headphones plays this "anti-noise" along with your music.
When the two waves meet, they cancel each other out. Scientists call this destructive interference. The result is that much of the background noise seems to disappear, even though the headphones are actually producing extra sound.
This active noise cancellation works best on steady, predictable sounds, like the hum of an aeroplane engine or an air-conditioner. It is less effective against sudden or irregular noises, such as a dog barking or a door slamming, because these change too quickly for the system to match them precisely. That is why most noise-cancelling headphones combine both methods: padding for the higher-pitched sounds and anti-noise for the low hum.
Q31. What is the main purpose of the first paragraph?
Q32. What word does the text use for a squeezed area of air in a sound wave?
Q33. Which shows the steps of active noise cancellation in the correct order?
Q34. Why has the writer put the word "anti-noise" in quotation marks?
Q35. Based on the text, which sound would active noise cancellation reduce most effectively?
Q36. Why do most noise-cancelling headphones use both padding and anti-noise?
Book review: Saltwind by Petra Lindqvist
Reviewed by Jonah Reyes, age 13. Rating: 4 out of 5
Some books grab you by the collar on the first page. Saltwind is not one of them. For the first three chapters, very little happens: twelve-year-old Oona moves with her mother to a windswept island where the ferry comes twice a week and the only shop sells bait and batteries. I almost gave up. I am glad I didn't.
Once Oona finds a sealed bottle wedged in the rocks below the old signal station, the story finally catches the wind. The note inside, written seventy years earlier by a girl her own age, sets Oona on a search that draws in the island's grumpy harbourmaster, a boy who refuses to speak, and a secret the adults would rather keep buried.
Lindqvist's greatest strength is her setting. You can practically taste the salt on the page. Storms don't just happen in this book; they prowl around the island, rattling windows and testing doors. The island feels like a character in its own right.
The characters are almost as strong. Oona is stubborn and sometimes unkind, which makes her more believable than the perfect heroes of many adventure stories. Her slow friendship with silent Callum is handled with real care.
My main complaint is the ending. After such a patient build-up, the final mystery is solved in just a few pages, and one important question about the letter-writer is never answered. Perhaps the author is planning a sequel, but I felt a little cheated.
Even so, Saltwind is a gripping, atmospheric read for anyone aged eleven and up who enjoys mysteries and doesn't mind a slow start. Pack a jumper — you'll feel the cold.
Q37. What does the reviewer mean by "Some books grab you by the collar on the first page"?
Q38. In the final paragraph, the word "atmospheric" suggests the book
Q39. According to the reviewer, what is the author's greatest strength?
Q40. "Storms don't just happen in this book; they prowl around the island, rattling windows and testing doors." The storms are described as if they were
Q41. Why does the reviewer find Oona believable?
Q42. Which statement best sums up the reviewer's overall opinion of Saltwind?
Green Team Report: What's Really in Our Bins?
In March, the Year 7 Green Team carried out a waste audit. Over one school week, we collected the contents of every general rubbish bin at school (not the recycling bins), then sorted and weighed everything. Yes, we wore gloves.
Table 1: Contents of general rubbish bins, by type
Food scraps — 31 kg
Paper and cardboard — 22 kg
Soft plastics (wrappers and bags) — 14 kg
Drink containers (cans and bottles) — 9 kg
Other (items that cannot be recycled or composted) — 8 kg
Total — 84 kg
Table 2: Contents of general rubbish bins, by location
Canteen area — 36 kg
Classrooms — 28 kg
Staffroom — 12 kg
Oval and playground — 8 kg
Total — 84 kg
What we found
The biggest surprise was how little of our "rubbish" was actually rubbish. Only 8 kg belonged in the bin at all. Everything else could have been composted, recycled or returned for a refund, if the right bins and collection points had been available. Food scraps were the largest category, making up more than a third of the total. The canteen area produced the most waste of any location, which makes sense because that is where most eating happens.
What we recommend
1. Place compost bins beside the canteen for fruit peel and leftover food.
2. Put a paper recycling box in every classroom.
3. Collect drink containers separately. Under our state's container deposit scheme, most of them can be returned for a 10-cent refund, and the money could help pay for the compost bins.
4. Ask the canteen to reduce plastic wrapping where possible.
We plan to repeat the audit in September to see whether these changes make a difference.
Q43. How many kilograms of the waste could NOT have been composted, recycled or returned for a refund?
Q44. According to Table 1, which two categories together make up more than half of the total waste?
Q45. Why do the writers include the sentence "Yes, we wore gloves."?
Q46. Which recommendation is aimed most directly at the largest category of waste in Table 1?
Q47. Which statement is supported by the data in the report?
Q48. Why does the Green Team plan to repeat the audit in September?
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