GATE / ASET · PRACTICE METHOD
Drilling is doing many questions and counting the score. Practice is doing fewer questions and understanding every one of them. The ASET rewards the second, because it shows children question types they have not met before. Abstract reasoning is rarely taught in primary school, so a child who has only memorised past papers has nothing to fall back on when the pattern changes.
The difference at the kitchen table:
Drilling is a stack of papers, a score at the end, and straight on to the next paper.
Practice is a small set of questions, each one explained in the child’s own words, with the wrong ones kept.
Drilling makes a child faster at questions they can already do.
Practice teaches the method underneath, so an unfamiliar question is still workable.
A score tells you where the child is today. A review tells you what to do next week.
If you have not seen how the paper is put together, read the GATE test format first, then our guide to the ASET exam.
Each section rewards a different habit. A parent can run all of these at home.
Ask your child to say the rule out loud before looking at the options. “The shape is turning”, “the shading moves one step”.
Cover the options with a hand. Predict, then uncover and check.
If two options both seem right, the rule is not specific enough yet. Ask what separates them.
Read the question twice before touching the numbers. Many errors are reading errors, not maths errors.
Write the working down, even for questions done in the head. It is what you review later.
Estimate first. A rough answer catches a slip in the exact one.
Read the questions before the passage, so your child knows what to look for.
Every answer must point to a line in the text. Ask “show me where it says that”.
Separate “what it says” from “what it suggests”. Inference is where children drift into guessing.
Practise across text types, not just stories. Passages may be fiction, non-fiction, poetry or drama, and can come with a diagram, table, chart or map.
Plan for a few lines before writing: the main idea, the order, the ending.
Write to the prompt, not around it. There is no set text type, so your child picks the style, but the link to the prompt has to be obvious. Writing with little or no link to it is heavily penalised.
Read it back aloud. The ear catches what the eye misses.
You do not need to be a teacher to give feedback. Ask “what is this piece about?” and see whether the answer matches the page.
For a plain description of each section, read what is in the ASET.
Short and regular beats long and rare. A focused session a few times a week teaches more than a full paper every Sunday.
Year 4: two sessions a week, 20 to 30 minutes each, untimed. The aim is to meet the question types and build the habit of explaining answers, not to build speed yet.
Year 5: three sessions a week, 30 to 40 minutes each. Add a timer to some of them as March gets closer, so pace is learned gradually rather than in the exam hall. For reference, the real sections run 35, 35 and 20 minutes.
Set the timer to the real rate, not a round number. Reading comprehension and quantitative reasoning both run 35 questions in 35 minutes, so a minute a question. Abstract reasoning runs 35 questions in 20 minutes, so about 34 seconds. Written expression is one hand-written piece in 25 minutes, planning and editing included.
Both years: a full timed paper occasionally, not weekly. Full papers measure. Short sessions teach.
Stop before your child is tired. A tired child guesses, and guessing is a habit you do not want to practise.
Students in our GATE classes also practise between classes on our personalised learning platform, so a parent does not have to source questions each week. Platform access is included with GATE classes, not with the Year 3 and 4 NAPLAN classes.
Most families skip this step, and it is where the marks are. Use this sequence every time.
1.
Do not give the right answer. Say only that it is wrong, and ask your child to find it again.
2.
Ask what they thought the question was asking, in their own words. A large share of errors end here.
3.
Ask why they chose the answer they did. Wrong options are written to look right, so this is a fair question.
4.
Now look at the correct answer together. Ask “what did you need to notice to get here?”
5.
Write one line in the notebook: the question type, and what to notice next time. Not “got it wrong”, but “I stopped at the first rule that fitted”.
6.
Come back to the same question in a week, without the notes. Right, cross it off. Wrong, it stays on the list.
Then sort every wrong answer into one of three groups. This tells you where next week’s time should go.
Did not know the method. Teach it, or find someone who can. More questions will not fix this.
Knew the method, misread the question. A reading habit, not a knowledge gap. The two-reads rule fixes it over time.
Ran out of time. A pace issue. Only worth attention from Year 5, once the first two groups are small.
One more rule. In practice, a right answer reached by guessing is a wrong answer. Ask “how sure were you?” now and then, and put lucky guesses in the notebook too. On the day it is the other way around. Every multiple choice question is worth one mark and nothing is deducted for a wrong answer, so with a minute left your child should fill in every blank rather than leave it empty. Teach that as a last-minute rule, not a working habit.
You do not need a plan for the term. You need a plan for tonight.
TONIGHT’S SESSION
1.
Pick one section. Not a full paper.
2.
Set out a handful of questions from the free sample paper. It comes with an answer key, and there is a worked video walkthrough of every question.
3.
Your child works through them. Untimed in Year 4. In Year 5, a timer running in view but not enforced.
4.
Mark together. Every wrong answer goes through the six steps above.
5.
One line in the notebook per wrong answer, in your child’s handwriting.
6.
Stop while they would still do one more. End on a right answer if you can.
Repeat it and rotate the section. Once the notebook has a few pages, read it back together. The patterns in it are your practice plan.
Our free sample ASET questions, which cover all four sections including the writing task. Download the paper, print it, and run the session above.
A free GATE mock exam in Perth, run at Curtin University under real test conditions, with marked results returned to you. This is your occasional full paper.
The Department of Education publishes its own free Practice ASET, and it is the closest thing to the real paper that exists. It comes as one file per section plus the answer booklet and the answer key: reading comprehension, communicating ideas in writing, quantitative reasoning, abstract reasoning, answer booklet and answers to the multiple choice questions. Print the answer booklet, because getting used to filling it in is part of the practice.
The learning platform, for students enrolled in our GATE classes.
Question sets from other states’ selective tests are useful for method but not for style. Check them against the GATE test format first.
If you would rather a tutor ran the weekly review, our small group GATE classes do that. See how they work under GATE tutoring in Perth.
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