Advanced Comprehension Skills: OC Practice Papers Book 1

Designed to help students develop their comprehension skills and prepare for the NSW Opportunity Class Test

In this book, designed for Year 4, students will tackle eight sample tests of the new format Reading paper for the NSW Opportunity Class Placement Test. The tests feature a range of original, challenging and engaging texts from a wide variety of genres. Students will practise applying their higher order comprehension skills, including summarising, synthesising, comparing, analysing, interpreting inferred and implied meaning, and understanding the writer’s purpose and craft.

An introduction provides tips on how to approach the questions and what to look out for. This is followed by eight practice papers, each containing 25 advanced comprehension questions. The end of the book contains detailed explanations for each question so that students can carefully review and understand their mistakes.

Each paper is made up of four parts: 

• one long extract (or sometimes two shorter ones): six questions
• a poem: five questions
• a non-fiction cloze passage: six questions
• a set of four short extracts linked by a common theme: eight questions

Contents

• Practice Reading Paper 1
• Practice Reading Paper 2
• Practice Reading Paper 3
• Practice Reading Paper 4
• Practice Reading Paper 5
• Practice Reading Paper 6
• Practice Reading Paper 7
• Practice Reading Paper 8
• Answers with explanations

About the Authors

Helen Kelly has worked in international assessments for 20 years as both a marker and author of education assessment material, including ICAS and NAPLAN. She has a background as a high school English teacher and has published nine books for children.

With over a decade of experience preparing students for Selective, Scholarship and OC exams, Tysan Allen is the co-founder and head teacher of EduVision, where he teaches enrichment writing and reading comprehension classes. He is also the co-author of Advanced Comprehension Skills: Cloze Passages.