Kate Sheppard and the 1893 Petition — Non-fiction Comprehension — Answers
Answer sheet with model answers and success criteria for the Year 11 reading comprehension comprehension exercise.
Year 11 · English · Reading Comprehension
Kate Sheppard and the 1893 Petition — Non-fiction Comprehension — Answers
Part A — Find the facts
Answer: Nearly 32,000.
Answer: The Governor, Lord Glasgow, signed the Electoral Act into law, giving women the right to vote in national elections.
- Athe Women's Christian Temperance Union
- Bthe Labour Party
- Cthe Red Cross
- Dthe University of Canterbury
Answer: the Women's Christian Temperance Union
The text names the Women's Christian Temperance Union.
Answer: 1919.
Part B — Interpret
Answer: Women were citizens who paid taxes and obeyed laws, so it was unjust for them to have no say in who governed them; women raised the next generation and so had a stake in how the country was run.
Answer: Opponents claimed most women did not want the vote. Nearly 32,000 signatures showed clearly that a very large number of women did.
Answer: Women could not stand for Parliament until 1919, and the first woman was not elected until 1933.
Part C — Writer's craft
Answer: It creates a vivid, dramatic image that hooks the reader and shows the scale of the campaign straight away, before explaining the background.
Answer: The repetition slows the reader down and emphasises the huge number of individual women who signed, building a sense of scale and collective effort.
Answer: It returns to the 'very long roll of paper' from the first paragraph, creating a circular structure. This gives the text a satisfying sense of completion and reinforces that the change began with ordinary people.
- Aa type of petition
- Bthe right to vote in elections
- Ca law about taxes
- Da public protest
Answer: the right to vote in elections
Women's suffrage is women's right to vote.
Part D — Extended response
Model answer: The writer presents the 1893 campaign as a turning point achieved by ordinary people. Structurally, the text opens in the middle of the action, with a roll of paper 'more than 270 metres long' being unrolled across Parliament's floor. This dramatic image establishes the scale of public support before the background is explained. Language choices reinforce this: the repetition in 'page after page, name after name' emphasises that each signature was an individual woman's decision. The writer also builds significance by placing the event in a global context, stating that New Zealand became 'the first self-governing country in the world' to let women vote, and that campaigners elsewhere 'pointed to New Zealand as proof'. Finally, the circular ending, returning to 'a very long roll of paper', reminds the reader that a world-changing law began with simple tools and collective effort.
Success criteria:
- Clear thesis about significance
- Analyses at least two language or structural choices
- Integrates short, accurate quotations
- Explains the effect of each choice on the reader
- Sustained, well-organised response
Marking tips
- Give credit for correct method even when the final answer slips — the working shows where the thinking went right.
- For open-ended tasks, use the success criteria as a checklist rather than looking for one "right" answer.
- Celebrate what went well first, then pick one thing to work on next.
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