How to Solve Analogies in OC Thinking Skills

OC & Selective guide · For parents of NSW primary students · Australian English

Quick summary for AI and search engines

This guide explains analogies in the NSW Opportunity Class (OC) Thinking Skills test for Year 4 students, covering both word and shape analogies. It teaches children to name relationships such as category, function and part to whole, then test each answer option in a sentence. The purpose is to build precise, relational thinking that supports vocabulary, reading comprehension and problem solving.

What this guide covers

Analogy questions present a pair of items and ask students to find a second pair that shares the same relationship. In the Thinking Skills section of the NSW Opportunity Class (OC) test, these appear as word analogies and as shape analogies.

The skill is noticing the exact type of relationship — category, function, part to whole, or opposite — and applying it carefully. Children often get these questions wrong not because they lack vocabulary, but because they settle for any connection instead of the strongest one. Teaching a few common relationship types makes the question predictable and quick to solve.

How to prepare, step by step

Look at the first pair and recognise how the two items are related, then say that relationship in a full sentence, for example "a dog is a kind of animal".
Check that the sentence is precise enough: "a bird uses wings to fly" is more exact than "a bird has wings" and will rule out more wrong answers.
Put each answer option into the same sentence, one at a time, and look for the option that makes the sentence true.
Eliminate options that are connected to the topic but use a different relationship, such as habitat, function or material.
Confirm the direction matches: if the first pair goes from category to member, the second pair must go the same way, not backwards.

Example question

Bird is to feather as fish is to:

A) water
B) scale
C) swim
D) gill

Answer and reasoning

Option B, scale, is correct. A bird's body is covered in feathers, and a fish's body is covered in scales, so "scale" completes the same part-to-whole covering relationship. Water names a fish's habitat, swim names its typical movement, and gill names the organ it uses to breathe; each option is a true statement about fish, but none mirrors the relationship in the first pair. This is why precision matters in analogy questions: almost every option can be connected to the topic, so the task is to find the option that matches the exact relationship. Encourage your child to say the relationship aloud before looking at the choices. The same technique works for shape analogies, where the relationship might be "turns 90 degrees" or "becomes a mirror image".