Reading Comprehension Skills by Grade: What to Practise from Grade 2 to Grade 8

“Reading comprehension” is really a bundle of smaller skills. Knowing which one a child is stuck on makes practice much more useful. Here is how they build, grade by grade, with a free passage to try for each.

Grades 2 and 3: understanding what the text says

• Details. Find the sentence that answers the question. The answer is in the text, not guessed.
• Sequence. Put events or steps in order, using words like first, then and finally. How-to texts are perfect for this.
• Main idea. Say what the whole passage is mostly about. A detail covers one part; the main idea covers every part.
• Vocabulary in context. Work out a new word from the sentences around it.

Try The Snail Race or The Lighthouse Cat.

Grades 4 and 5: reading between the lines

• Inference. Put a clue from the text together with what you already know. The answer isn’t written word for word, but the text supports it.
• Evidence. Choose the sentence that proves an idea. Good evidence connects directly to the claim.
• Cause and effect. Spot why something happened and what happened because of it.
• Character traits and theme. Describe what a character is like from what they do, and name the lesson a story teaches.
• Reading tables. Find the right row, then read across to the right column.

Try The Broken Kite for theme or a survey table for data.

Grades 6 to 8: thinking about how the text works

• Author’s purpose. Ask why the writer included a part: to explain, persuade, entertain or show something.
• Text structure. Notice how the passage is built: time order, problem and solution, compare and contrast.
• Compare two texts. Find what two passages share and how they differ.
• Point of view. Tell who is telling the story and what they can and can’t know.
• Timelines and data. Read dates and numbers to answer “how many years” and “how many more”.

Try a biography or a paired text about two animals that survive the same habitat in different ways.

How to practise

Every skill has its own page with a one-line how-to and the passages that practise it: start at reading skills. After each passage, the questions show the right answer and why it’s right, which is where most of the learning happens. Your child’s score for the grade climbs with every passage, and My progress keeps the record.