Year 6 · Reading
Spry WillowNo. 02
Calibration
Matched to the real test, question by question.
Five parts in 45 minutes — a fiction extract, a vocabulary cloze, a poem, a gapped-text passage, and a multiple-matching set — built from real, public-domain literature, the same shape as the NSW Selective Reading test. Currently in Beta and still being refined against the real test.
Every paper is generated, sat, and hand-reviewed before it is published. If a question is wrong in timing, format, or difficulty, it is rewritten. If the paper does not feel like the real test, you have thirty days to say so and ask for a refund.
— Made and reviewed in Sydney.
What you get
- OnlineAn online test mode built to feel like the real test. Timed, with a flag button, zoom, and a side panel for diagrams. Three attempts at each paper, auto-scored with a weak-spot breakdown.
- ReviewAfter each attempt, the review screen shows the correct answer and an explanation for every question.
- EmailA copy of your link, so you can return to the online test at any time.
Preview
Three questions from this paper
Pulled straight from this paper, options and all. The correct answers appear in the review screen after you sit it.
- Q1
Today we ride bicycles without a second thought, yet the machine we know took almost a century to take shape. It was not invented by one clever person in one moment. ____ (23) The story began in Germany in 1817, when Baron Karl von Drais unveiled a wooden two-wheeler that had no pedals at all. A rider sat astride it and pushed along the ground with both feet, which soon earned the contraption the mocking nickname of the 'hobby-horse'.
For nearly fifty years the hobby-horse changed very little. Then, in the 1860s, French makers bolted a pair of pedals straight onto its front wheel. ____ (24) Riders nicknamed the result the 'boneshaker', because its iron frame and wooden wheels rattled every bone in the body as it lurched across the cobblestones.
The next idea was odd but clever. Makers realised that a taller front wheel would roll further with every push of the pedals, so they built that wheel higher and higher — until it stood taller than the rider himself. ____ (25) Only bold young men could scramble up onto these towering machines, and any rider thrown over the handlebars faced a nasty fall.
____ (26) Two equal wheels came back, but this time a loop of chain carried the rider's effort to the rear wheel, leaving the front one free to steer. The saddle now sat low to the ground, so a fall was no longer a disaster, and almost anybody could learn to balance. Proud of their creation, makers called it the 'safety bicycle', and within a few years the perilous penny-farthing had all but vanished from the roads.
Even the safety bicycle had one stubborn fault: its tyres were made of solid rubber. ____ (27) In 1888 an Irish vet named John Dunlop hit upon the answer, wrapping each wheel in a fat tube of air. These pneumatic tyres soaked up every bump, and almost overnight cycling turned smooth, quiet and pleasant.
With comfort and safety at last combined, the bicycle became the marvel of the age. Through the 1890s a great cycling craze swept across Europe, America and Australia. ____ (28) For young women in particular, the machine was nothing short of a liberation, carrying them out of the house and off down the open road, for the first time, without a chaperone at their side.
Which sentence best fits gap 23?
- Q2
Today we ride bicycles without a second thought, yet the machine we know took almost a century to take shape. It was not invented by one clever person in one moment. ____ (23) The story began in Germany in 1817, when Baron Karl von Drais unveiled a wooden two-wheeler that had no pedals at all. A rider sat astride it and pushed along the ground with both feet, which soon earned the contraption the mocking nickname of the 'hobby-horse'.
For nearly fifty years the hobby-horse changed very little. Then, in the 1860s, French makers bolted a pair of pedals straight onto its front wheel. ____ (24) Riders nicknamed the result the 'boneshaker', because its iron frame and wooden wheels rattled every bone in the body as it lurched across the cobblestones.
The next idea was odd but clever. Makers realised that a taller front wheel would roll further with every push of the pedals, so they built that wheel higher and higher — until it stood taller than the rider himself. ____ (25) Only bold young men could scramble up onto these towering machines, and any rider thrown over the handlebars faced a nasty fall.
____ (26) Two equal wheels came back, but this time a loop of chain carried the rider's effort to the rear wheel, leaving the front one free to steer. The saddle now sat low to the ground, so a fall was no longer a disaster, and almost anybody could learn to balance. Proud of their creation, makers called it the 'safety bicycle', and within a few years the perilous penny-farthing had all but vanished from the roads.
Even the safety bicycle had one stubborn fault: its tyres were made of solid rubber. ____ (27) In 1888 an Irish vet named John Dunlop hit upon the answer, wrapping each wheel in a fat tube of air. These pneumatic tyres soaked up every bump, and almost overnight cycling turned smooth, quiet and pleasant.
With comfort and safety at last combined, the bicycle became the marvel of the age. Through the 1890s a great cycling craze swept across Europe, America and Australia. ____ (28) For young women in particular, the machine was nothing short of a liberation, carrying them out of the house and off down the open road, for the first time, without a chaperone at their side.
Which sentence best fits gap 26?
- Q3
Which writer was cured of a childhood fear not by any comforting but by being handed a job and simply left to manage it alone?