The Year 7 NAPLAN is usually a small milestone for many junior high school students. It’s often their first exposure to the raised standards of high school testing. And whilst it can be an achievement, it can also be a challenge for many.
Fear not, though! Our comprehensive guide has everything which you and your child need to know about the Year 7 NAPLAN. We’ve broken down each of the tests and explored exactly what you should expect.
So, what are you waiting for? Let’s get started!
The Exams
Reading
Writing
Language Conventions
Numeracy
Practice Papers
Help your child excel in NAPLAN with personalised Year 7 NAPLAN Tutoring in your home, online, or at our Hornsby tutoring or Castle Hill tutoring campuses!
The Year 7 NAPLAN Exams
You and your child may already be familiar with the structure of the Year 7 NAPLAN tests. It follows the same model as they may have followed in their Year 3 and Year 5 NAPLAN tests. The structure is as shown below:
- Reading & Writing
- Language Conventions
- Numeracy
If your child is sitting the exams in the paper format, then these three tests will occur consecutively over three days. Your child’s testing dates will, however, be different if their school is testing in the online format.
You can explore more information regarding online testing here.
Let’s have a look at each skillset area, and what you should expect:
Reading
If your child is a reader, then they’ll love this test! The reading element of test one assesses how well your child can read and comprehend certain texts. The texts range from narratives and feature articles to poems and essays, and are of varying difficulty.
The questions themselves depend upon the style of the text. When presented with an argument, for example, your child may be assessed upon whether they can identify the main message of the piece. In contrast, students will be challenged to identify the intention of the author whilst comprehending poems.
A breakdown of which text types may be included, and what is assessed is below:
| Style of Text | Students are assessed upon whether they can: |
|---|---|
| Narrative | - Infer the motivation or intention of the narrator or a character - Draw together ideas to identify a character's attitude - Interpret dialogue to describe a character - Connect ideas to infer a character's intention or misconception, or the significance of the character’s actions - Interpret the significance of an event for the main character |
| Poem | - Identify the intention of the narrator |
| Information Text | - Identify the main idea of a paragraph and the main purpose of the text - Link and interpret information across the text - Recognise the most likely opinion of a person - Use text conventions to locate a detail |
| Persuasive Text (e.g. Argument) | - Locate and interpret directly stated information, including the meaning of specific words and expressions - Identify the main message of the text - Identify the purpose of parts of the text - Interpret the main idea of a paragraph - Infer the writer's point of view - Identify points of agreement in arguments that present different views - Identify and interpret language conventions used in the text, such as lists, order of online posts and the use of punctuation for effect - Identify the common theme in a variety of writers’ opinions |
Courtesy nap.edu.au
If you’re wondering how complex the texts will be, you can use the example reading booklet as a gauge.
Writing
After a very healthy dose of reading, your son or daughter will then begin the writing section. This part of the Year 7 NAPLAN assesses two main abilities. Those being your child’s ability to craft sophisticated writing, whilst also appropriately respond to their question and stimulus.
The questions direct students to compose compelling copy in one of three forms:
- Imaginative writing – including narrative writing
- Persuasive writing, and
- Informative writing
Whilst imaginative and persuasive forms have been tested, informative writing has not yet been tested in the Year 7 NAPLAN.
Unfortunately, there’s really no telling what your child’s stimulus could be. Fortunately, we have past stimuli to explore and familiarise with! A past imaginative writing stimulus was The Box, and the stimulus City or Country has been used for persuasive form.
The marking criteria differ slightly between each form style. They are detailed below:
Narrative Writing
| Marking criterion | Description of narrative writing marking criterion |
|---|---|
| Audience | The writer’s capacity to orient, engage and affect the reader |
| Text structure | The organisation of narrative features including orientation, complication and resolution into an appropriate and effective text structure |
| Ideas | The creation, selection and crafting of ideas for a narrative |
| Character and setting | Character: The portrayal and development of character |
| Setting: The development of a sense of place, time and atmosphere | |
| Vocabulary | The range and precision of contextually appropriate language choices |
| Cohesion | The control of multiple threads and relationships across the text, achieved through the use of grammatical elements (referring words, text connectives, conjunctions) and lexical elements (substitutions, repetitions, word associations) |
| Paragraphing | The segmenting of text into paragraphs that assists the reader to negotiate the narrative |
| Sentence structure | The production of grammatically correct, structurally sound and meaningful sentences |
| Punctuation | The use of correct and appropriate punctuation to aid the reading of the text |
| Spelling | The accuracy of spelling and the difficulty of the words used |
Persuasive Writing
| Marking criterion | Description of persuasive writing marking criterion |
|---|---|
| Audience | The writer’s capacity to orient, engage and persuade the reader |
| Text structure | The organisation of the structural components of a persuasive text (introduction, body and conclusion) into an appropriate and effective text structure |
| Ideas | The selection, relevance and elaboration of ideas for a persuasive argument |
| Persuasive devices | The use of a range of persuasive devices to enhance the writer’s position and persuade the reader |
| Vocabulary | The range and precision of contextually appropriate language choices |
| Cohesion | The control of multiple threads and relationships across the text, achieved through the use of grammatical elements (referring words, text connectives, conjunctions) and lexical elements (substitutions, repetitions, word associations) |
| Paragraphing | The segmenting of text into paragraphs that assists the reader to follow the line of argument |
| Sentence structure | The production of grammatically correct, structurally sound and meaningful sentences |
| Punctuation | The use of correct and appropriate punctuation to aid the reading of the text |
| Spelling | The accuracy of spelling and the difficulty of the words used |
Courtesy nap.edu.au
Language Conventions
Before you get your hopes up, this exam is not a convention celebrating different languages. Sorry…! Rather, it’s something even better. It’s the part of the NAPLAN where your child’s spelling, punctuation and grammar abilities are tested.
Spelling
The spelling section of the Year 7 NAPLAN will present your son or daughter with one of two different prompts. They may be asked to identify a misspelt word, and in some cases, provide the correct spelling. Or, they may be asked just to write the correct spelling. This is the case with the below example:
Luckily, as shown above, many questions in the Year 7 NAPLAN are designed to be relatively engaging. And, spelling questions usually only ask the student to correct the spelling. This is opposed to other Language Conventions questions which may combine punctual and grammatical challenges.
Punctuation
There are a few different punctuation skills assessed in this part of your child’s NAPLAN testing. Questions focusing on simple forms of punctuation, like full-stops and question marks, are usually omitted, as they are tested in Year 3 and 5. The punctuation knowledge assessed in the Year 7 NAPLAN surrounds:
- Quotation Marks
- Commas
- Colons
- Ellipses
Below is an example of a past NAPLAN punctuation question:
Grammar
The part of the NAPLAN which you’ve been dying to hear about — Grammar! The grammar element of the Year 7 NAPLAN examines a few essential elements of language conventions.
The grammar questions mostly revolve around regular and irregular tenses. Sometimes, however, the questions combine elements of punctuation with elements of grammar. Below is an example of this:
Numeracy
For those students that are more numbers-oriented than literary-focussed, there is the numeracy exam! The Year 7 NAPLAN Numeracy test measures your child’s proficiency in three content strands of Mathematics:
- Numbers & Algebra
- Measurement & Geometry
- Statistics & Probability
Within these three areas, your child’s mathematical understanding, fluency, problem-solving and reasoning abilities are assessed.
If you haven’t heard, the Years 7-10 NSW Maths Curriculum is changing in 2024! Here’s what’s going to happen.
If your son or daughter is yet to sit their Year 7 NAPLAN, then they’ve had a stroke of luck! There have been generous changes to the Year 7 NAPLAN Numeracy test. Now, there is only one test session with just 48 questions. This is replacing the old model of two sessions consisting of 64 questions. Sweet!
The questions your child will face are a combination of both multiple choice and constructed response. Below is an example of a past constructed response:
The exam is split into two parts — Part A (where calculators are allowed), and Part B (where calculators are not allowed).
Practice Papers
By now you and your budding student are probably dying to dive into some practice! So, let’s do it! It’s time for your child to put all of their knowledge to good use.
We’d like to remind you, however, that it is not completely necessary to prepare for the NAPLAN. This is because the NAPLAN develops and tests skills which develop over time. What’d we’d recommend is just light preparation — enough to help your child familiarise themselves with the test and ease their exam-day nerves.
You can access our Master List of NAPLAN Practice Tests here!
Our NAPLAN Series
We’ve written a whole series of articles to help you and your children navigate the NAPLAN. Check out the rest of our series with the links below!
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