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Reading Comprehension Workbooks and Leveled Readers

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Reading Comprehension

Free reading comprehension worksheets.

Use these printable worksheets to improve reading comprehension. Over 100  free children's stories  followed by comprehension exercises, as well as  worksheets focused on specific comprehension topics  (main idea, sequencing, etc).

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Reading worksheets by topic:.

Children's stories

Compare and contrast

Main idea & supporting details

Conclusions and inferences

Fact vs fiction

Fact vs opinion

Figurative language

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Reading comprehension worksheets terms of use, read theory workbooks visit our online store here .

  • Grade 1 - Find more here!
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reading comprehension task

Critical Thinking Reading Comprehension Worksheets

  • Take these as online quizzes here!

Short Story Reading Comprehension Worksheets

  • Beginning Level
  • Answers for this series are included at the end of each worksheet.
  • "My Friend" - Low Beginning. 3 answer choices. 7 questions. 74 words.
  • "My House" - Low Beginning. 3 answer choices. 7 questions. 92 words.
  • "Time to..." - Low Beginning. 4 answer choices. 11 questions. 89 words.
  • "My Family" - Low Beginning. 4 answer choices. 6 questions. 90 words.
  • "Rainy Day" - Low Beginning. 4 answer choices. 5 questions. 78 words.
  • "A Call to the Pool" - Low Beginning. 4 answer choices. 5 questions. 116 words.
  • "The Singing Bird" - Low Beginning. 4 answer choices. 5 questions. 96 words.
  • "Seeing Stars" - Low Beginning. 4 answer choices. 8 questions. 92 words.
  • "I Fly" - Low Beginning. 4 answer choices. 4 questions. 113 words.
  • "The Drive" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 120 words.
  • "Zach's Animals" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 104 words.
  • "Griffin's Talents" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 9 questions. 112 words.
  • "A Happy Visitor" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 5 questions. 170 words.
  • "An Adventure" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 5 questions. 177 words.
  • "Running" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 5 questions. 148 words.
  • "Paul Cooks" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 112 words.
  • "Bella Hides" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 8 questions. 135 words.
  • "First Prize" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 8 questions. 155 words.
  • "What Number?" - Mid Beginning. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 154 words.
  • "The Interview" - High Beginning. 4 answer choices. 9 questions. 205 words.
  • "Julian's Work" - High Beginning. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 194 words.
  • "Talia's Special Day" - High Beginning. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 204 words.
  • "One Hundred Dollars" - High Beginning. 4 answer choices. 13 questions. 273 words.
  • "New Shoes for Maddy" - High Beginning. 4 answer choices. 11 questions. 223 words.
  • "The 20" - High Beginning. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 256 words.
  • "Big City Noise" - High Beginning. 4 answer choices. 13 questions. 238 words.
  • Intermediate Level
  • "By the Water" - Low Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 9 questions. 225 words.
  • "A Cold Day" - Low Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 14 questions. 286 words.
  • "Vet Emergency!" - Low Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 247 words.
  • "Late" - Low Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 14 questions. 284 words.
  • "The Brenners" - Low Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 13 questions. 297 words.
  • "Bullied" - Low Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 13 questions. 197 words.
  • "The New School" - Low Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 14 questions. 286 words.
  • "The Park" - Low Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 11 questions. 297 words.
  • "Worth Working For" - Mid Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 280 words.
  • "The Rent Man" - Mid Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 215 words.
  • "Time with Grandpa" - Mid Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 9 questions. 237 words.
  • "The Bus Driver" - Mid Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 15 questions. 294 words.
  • "A Day Like No Other" - Mid Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 305 words.
  • "A Mystery" - Mid Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 247 words.
  • "Just One Touch" - Mid Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 15 questions. 326 words.
  • "Wanga" - Mid Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 13 questions. 340 words.
  • "Ana Finds an Apartment" - Mid Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 408 words.
  • "Guermo's Surprise" - High Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 9 questions. 372 words .
  • "Canopy of Nature" - High Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 8 questions. 332 words .
  • "Blizzard in Birmingham" - High Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 319 words.
  • "A Christmas in March" - High Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 385 words.
  • "Bail" - High Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 301 words.
  • "Clean Water Act" - High Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 632 words.
  • "BB" - High Intermediate. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 511 words .
  • Advanced Level
  • "The Mini Problem" - Low Advanced. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 291 words .
  • "Flower Power" - Low Advanced. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 368 words.
  • "Seeing Clearly" - Low Advanced. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 284 words .
  • "Accused" - Low Advanced. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 285 words.
  • "City Girl" - Low Advanced. 4 answer choices. 13 questions. 429 words.
  • "Fried" - Mid Advanced. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 235 words.
  • "Tattoo" - Mid Advanced. 4 answer choices. 11 questions. 350 words.
  • "The Transfers" - Mid Advanced. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 381 words.
  • "Wild" - Mid Advanced. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 493 words.
  • "Scorpion" - Low Advanced. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 333 words
  • "Remains of a Marriage" - Mid Advanced. 4 answer choices. 11 questions. 345 words.
  • "Museum Hours" - Mid Advanced. 4 answer choices. 10 questions. 179 words.
  • "Seeing Through" - High Advanced. 5 answer choices. 10 questions. 326 words.
  • "Ursula Pugh" - High Advanced. 5 answer choices. 8 questions. 324 words.
  • "Dreams" - High Advanced. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 357 words.
  • "Tracks" - High Advanced. 5 answer choices. 11 questions. 531 words.
  • "Love Train" - High Advanced. 5 answer choices. 12 questions. 646 words.
  • "The Storm" - High Advanced. 4 answer choices. 12 questions. 407 words.

Informational Passages Reading Comprehension Worksheets

In these reading comprehension worksheets, students are asked questions about information they have read about a specific topic. each passage reads similar to a newspaper of journal article, and provides interesting information about some aspect of history, nature, mechanics, science, art, and more. questions involve critical thinking with a focus on logic and inference..

  • Answer Key - This answer key is available but still under development.
  • "The Sun" - Low Beginning. 3 questions. Under 50 words.
  • "Gas" - Low Beginning. 3 questions. Under 50 words.
  • "Music" - Low Beginning. 4 questions. Under 50 words.
  • "Birds" - Low Beginning. 4 questions. Under 50 words.
  • "The Heart" - Low Beginning. 4 questions. Under 50 words.
  • "The Butterfly" - Low Beginning. 5 questions. Under 50 words.
  • "Pigs" - Low Beginning. 3 questions. Under 50 words.
  • "The Brain" - Low Beginning. 3 questions. Under 50 words.
  • "The Ocean" - Low Beginning. 7 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "Trees" - Low Beginning. 4 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "Alligators" - Low Beginning. 6 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "The Blow-Dryer" - Low Beginning. 5 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "Green Grass" - Low Beginning. 6 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "Taste" - Low Beginning. 4 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "Bees" - Mid Beginning. 10 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Frogs" - Mid Beginning. 10 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Beds" - Mid Beginning. 10 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Humans" - Mid Beginning. 10 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Fish" - Mid Beginning. 10 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Houses" - Mid Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Soda Pop" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Tea" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Ice Fishing" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Bears" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Flags" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Leonardo Da Vinci" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words..
  • "Tennis" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Dogs" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Money" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Abraham Lincoln" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Corn" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Umbrellas" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Ben Franklin" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Cars" - High Beginning. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • Answer Key - This is the answer key for to the intermediate level informational passages.
  • "Helicopters" - Low Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Yellowstone National Park" - Low Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Empress of the Blues" - Low Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "The Cactus" - Low Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Space Exploration Voyagers 1 and 2" - Mid Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Television" - Mid Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Hibernation and Estivation" - Mid Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Marco Polo" - Mid Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Movie Ratings" - Mid Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Birdsongs" - Mid Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Counting" - Mid Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Easter Island" - High Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Mosquitoes" - High Intermediate. 12 questions. Under 700 words.
  • "Fingerprints" - High Intermediate. 11 questions. Under 700 words.
  • "Mother's Day" - High Intermediate. 10 questions. Under 700 words.
  • "Europe" - High Intermediate. 12 questions. Under 700 words.
  • Answer Key - This is the answer key for to the advanced level informational passages.
  • "Chocolate" - Low Advanced. 10 questions. Under 600 words.
  • "Houses Around the World" - Low Advanced. 10 questions. Under 700 words.
  • "Cells" - Low Advanced. 10 questions. Under 700 words.
  • "Soccer" - Low Advanced. 12 questions. Under 700 words.
  • "Bathtubs" - Low Advanced. 12 questions. Under 700 words.
  • "Pollution" - Low Advanced. 12 questions. Under 700 words.
  • "Interstate Highways" - Low Advanced. 10 questions. Under 800 words.
  • "The U.S. Census" - Low Advanced. 10 questions. Under 800 words.
  • "Sleep" - Low Advanced. 11 questions. Under 800 words.
  • "The U.S. Postal Service" - Mid Advanced. 11 questions. Under 800 words.
  • "Chemical Elements" - Mid Advanced. 11 questions. Under 800 words.
  • "Africa" - Mid Advanced. 11 questions. Under 1000 words.

Technical Reading Comprehension Worksheets

In these reading comprehension worksheets, students are asked questions about the meaning, significance, intention, structure, inference, and vocabulary used in each passage. each passage reads like an encyclopedic or technical journal article. answers for worksheets in this section can be found at the end of each individual worksheet..

  • "Water" - Beginning level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 300 words.
  • "Paper" - Beginning level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 300 words.
  • "The Flu" - Beginning level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 400 words.
  • "Nuts" - Beginning level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 400 words.
  • "The Sun" - Beginning level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 400 words.
  • "The White House" - Beginning level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 400 words.
  • "Soap" - Intermediate level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 400 words.
  • "Clocks" - Intermediate level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 400 words.
  • "The Robin" - Intermediate level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 400 words.
  • "Hybrid Vehicles" - Intermediate level. 4 questions with answers included. Under 500 words.
  • "Photography" - Intermediate level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 500 words.
  • "Biomimetics" - Intermediate level. 4 questions with answers included. Under 700 words.
  • "The Great Debates" - Intermediate level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 400 words.
  • "Salt" - Advanced level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 700 words.
  • "Colony Collapse" - Advanced level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 600 words.
  • "Columbian Exchange" - Advanced level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 700 words.
  • "Ethanol" - Advanced level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 600 words.
  • "Generations" - Advanced level. 3 questions with answers included. Under 600 words.
  • "The Hubble Telescope" - Advanced level. 7 questions with answers included. Under 1000 words.
  • "Intellegence Augmentation" - Advanced level. 5 questions with answers included. Under 1000 words.

Role Play Reading Comprehension Worksheets

In these reading comprehension worksheets, students can increase their understanding of colloquial and idiomatic expressions and get a feel for conversational english. they also allow several students to participate at the same time - which makes them really fun great for use in school or at home..

  • Answer Key - This is the answer key to the role play worksheets.
  • "What Time Is It?" - Beginning Level. 4 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "How Are You?" - Beginning Level. 4 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "Tie Your Shoes!" - Beginning Level. 4 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "Where Are My Glasses?" - Beginning Level. 4 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "A Cookie" - Beginning Level. 4 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "Where Are My Keys?" - Beginning Level. 4 questions. Under 100 words.
  • "City Life, Country Life" - Beginning Level. 10 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Flu Shot" - Intermediate Level. 5 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Vinegar" - Intermediate Level. 4 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Wait for Me!" - Intermediate Level. 8 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Glasses" - Intermediate Level. 8 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Hungry" - Advanced Level. 8 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Want to Know a Secret?" - Advanced Level. 8 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Milk and Aesthetics" - Advanced Level. 8 questions. Under 500 words.

Dual Version Reading Comprehension Worksheets

In each of these reading comprehension worksheets, the same story is told, but with two versions: one that is basic, and one that is more advanced. this allows students to make direct comparisons between the advanced version to the more basic one, and makes for a powerful learning experience..

  • Answer Key - Coming Soon!
  • "An Overcast Day" - Beginning Level. 4 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "Who Knows My Name?" - Beginning Level. 4 questions. Under 200 words.
  • "A Call to the Pool" - Beginning Level. 6 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Oh No!" - Beginning Level. 8 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "An Adventure" - Beginning Level. 6 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Happy Birthday" - Beginning Level. 4 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "My Family" - Beginning Level. 8 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "My Family" - Beginning Level. 5 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Driving Directions" - Beginning Level. 6 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "A Happy Visitor" - Beginning Level. 7 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "The Singing Bird" - Intermediate Level. 10 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "Violet Makes a Cake" - Intermediate Level. 8 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "A Visit to the Doctor" - Intermediate Level. 7 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "Making Dinner" - Intermediate Level. 8 questions. Under 400 words.
  • "The Market" - Intermediate Level. 10 questions. Under 500 words.
  • "Maria Gets Her License" - Intermediate Level. 8 questions. Under 500 words.
  • "A Paper for School" - Advanced Level. 7 questions. Under 300 words.
  • "A Birthday Surprise" - Advanced Level. 7 questions. Under 600 words.
  • "Getting a New Job" - Advanced Level. 8 questions. Under 600 words.
  • "The Dinner Party" - Advanced Level. 9 questions. Under 600 words.

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Reading Comprehension Worksheets

Inferences worksheets.

  • Context Clues Worksheets
  • Theme Worksheets

Main Idea Worksheets

  • Reading Games

Summary Worksheets

  • Online Tests
  • Figurative Language Worksheets

Short Stories with Questions

  • Nonfiction Passages
  • Genre Worksheets

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Here are a bunch of free reading comprehension worksheets. These will help students master reading skills. You can print, edit, or complete these worksheets online . Try the nonfiction or short story reading worksheets to cover general reading skills. Or focus on specific reading skills like making predictions .

Nonfiction Passages with Questions

  • Story Structure Worksheets
  • Characterization Worksheets
  • Setting Worksheets

Making Predictions Worksheets

This is a preview image of TV. Click on it to enlarge it or view the source file.

All Nonfiction Passages

This is a preview image of "Two Leaves". Click on it to enlarge it or view the source file.

All Short Stories

This is a preview image of Inferences Worksheet 1. Click on it to enlarge it or view the source file.

All Inferences Worksheets

This is a preview image of Main Idea Lesson 1. Click on it to enlarge it or view the source file.

All Main Idea Worksheets

This is a preview image of Theme Worksheet 1. Click on it to enlarge it or view the source file.

All Theme Worksheets

This is a preview image of "The Breakaway". Click on it to enlarge it or view the source file.

All Story Structure Worksheets

This is a preview image of Characterization Worksheet 1. Click on it to enlarge it or view the source file.

All Characterization Worksheets

This is a preview image of Setting Worksheet 1. Click on it to enlarge it or view the source file.

All Setting Worksheets

This is a preview image of Summarizing Worksheet 1. Click on it to enlarge it or view the source file.

All Summary Worksheets

This is a preview image of Making Predictions Worksheet 1. Click on it to enlarge it or view the source file.

All Prediction Worksheets

This is a picture of a teacher helping two students who are reading a text.

324 Comments

Thank you soooo much for all of these great resources! Especially valuable for my ELL students.

gdugeugeuygh

This test makes no sense.

Blanca Portillo

Wow. I could not not agree more with all these positive comments people have posted on this wonderful website. I do thank whoever created such a great resource for teaching. I have been exploring and using the worksheets. Not only do I but also my students have found them pretty useful and meaningful. Best wishes. and Keep up the wonderful work.

Thank you so much for your material. This has been a lifesaver! I wish to improve my students’ reading skills and you have been helping so much!

Priscilla Araba Hagan

Awesome. This has become my go-to site for testing my students’ reading comprehension. Keep it up!

I love your website my kids benefit so much from everything you do! THANK YOU!!

Priscilla Hagan

This has been a great find. I love the stories and so do my students. I have particularly found the nondiction passages wonderful – the ones which appear in their reading books are often bland and not engaging – and so do my students. They’re learning so much and it’s stirring their curiosity to do their digging about the topics they most enjoy.

Since comprehension questions in our part of the world are not mcqs – they are usuallyquestions which require short answers – I usually dowload the passages and prepare my own questions, with maybe one or two mcqs from your question bank thrown in. Thus, my students cannot find answers and it makes them do the hard work of comprehending the passages.

I also underline some of the words and phrases and ask them to find words or phrases which mean the same and can replace them in the passage – that’s another important component of questions asked on reading comprehension passages in my part of the world, Ghana. Maybe those complaining about cheaters can use some of these strategies. They can also tweak the questions on this site to do away with cheating.

Mr. Morton, you’re amazing. Love, love this site. My students and I are the better for it.

Ayana Sanchez

Hello from Panama, this website has proven so helpful to help my students study for the TOEFL

Keshia Cabriole

Good Morning may we use the Redwoods and Arm Races Story for our study? I would like to say that the story and questionnaire will be a big help if you allow us to use your story to our study.

Of course. Best wishes!

Sahar Zaher

Greetings from Egypt….I’ve been using this site for the past 3 years, and it never failed to impress me and my students. It’s very resourceful and I use it on daily basis. Wherever the owner of this site is, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

You are so welcome! Thank you for using my site.

Honestly, I am writing this short message from the far lower corner of Africa,all the way from Namibia. Coming across this website has just proven to me that truly good people still exist in this world,as opposed to my traditional name which means “Good people are extinct.” I am so grateful to the person who shared all this helpful and precious information. May God continue to fill your heart and life with gifts overflowing upto an eternal fold. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!

That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. I appreciate the kind words and hearing your story. I wish you the greatest possible success in all your endeavors.

Thank you so much for this. I am a 5/6 grader and I think my teachers will enjoy this too. I use this also over the summer so I can keep track of my smartness 🙂

Your website has been very helpful. I really appreciate all the material and worksheets you have available for free. Thank you!

gabriel simon

love your materials; like to be a member

Abeku Adams

Whoever you are behind this resource, know that you are a good person and I am grateful for making such superb materials available to us. I am in Ghana, West Africa. You’ve made life a lot easier. Do you have a button to which those who wish to make a small number of donations can go?

This website is supported by advertisements. No need for donations! But I am very happy that you like the site and took the time to comment. Best wishes!

Malik Radwan

These comprehensions were really helpful in studying It would be great if you would add poetry comprehensions too (the ones that ask for literary elements) Really thank you.

Do you mean poems with questions like these ?

Jornalyn N. Agapito

Thank you so much for this reading material. It was great help to my students to develop love in reading.

You’re such an amazing person! Thank you for sharing these materials. They helped me a lot as an ELA middle school teacher. May God bless you!

Excellent passages

I am looking for material for a 10-12 reading comprehension class. Your materials are great, but a lower interest level from HS students. Any suggestions for upper levels?

Thanks so much for sharing these wonderful worksheets!

JHANNET VELÁSQUEZ

EXCELLENT WEBSITE!

Excellent and the really valuable resource.

Delores J. Mayes

My students has searched and found the answer keys to these readings. I wish there was a way the teacher’s could sign in for the content and keep the cheaters from having the honest kids miss out on these readings. What has our world gone to. This is so sad that my students would copy answers word for word and expect to get a 100% as well as their parents. We are growing a nation of untruth and cheaters.

Yeah, that is pretty frustrating.

It’s tough to keep the content free and open while preventing students from finding the answers.

One thing that might help is downloading the .RTF file and editing the titles of the assignments. A persistent student will still be able to find the answers, but that may make it a little harder.

Also, remember, cheaters are only cheating themselves! And the system and everyone else too, but mainly themselves! Best wishes!

Hi Ma’am Dolores. That happened to me years ago during the MDL (modular distance learning) in our country, Philippines. You know what I did, I shorten my URLs and add number 1 at the end of it. This way, they can no longer trace my resources.

Alexandra Bardon

Thank you Mr. Morton for sharing! Your material is just what we need to keep students busy during lockdown. I really appreciate it. K. Bardon

Harbani Kaur

Thank you so much for sharing so much worksheets

This is a great website! thank you very much for sharing.

PASKARAN RAMAYA

Thank you very much Mr.Morton for providing such good reading texts . You have a big heart to share the resources without expecting nothing in return. I’m a teacher and it has been a great help to me in preparing reading materials for my students. Thank you!

Nusrat Jahan

I am pleased to get such a wonderful worksheet through this website.

love your website, thanks for caring and sharing your talents in many ways. the resources are quite helpful, and the games are invigorating

You, My Friend, have a guaranteed slot in heaven for sharing all of this amazing material.

I am a middle school remedial reading teacher and finding supplemental material for our students is always a challenge. Your content will be so helpful!

Thank you for your generosity. I have liked and am following your FB page, and I’ve already referred several of my teacher friends to check this out.

People like you make the world a better place.

I wish you all the success in the world, and hopefully some advertisers so you can start getting some money for all of this content.

Thank you for the kind words and the blessings. I wish you, as well, the greatest possible success.

Wonderful resources for teachers and learners.Express my heartfelt Thanks.

Great website could be a bit more specific on some stories and grade 4-8 is quite a gap

Übermom Fakoya

This is such a treasure trove, especially during this period of remote learning. To also offer these gems freely is great magnanimity on your part. I am grateful; thank you ever so much!

Do more worksheets for Grades 1-5.

Lawrence Fried

Hi. I use your material alot. Question: Regarding these Reading Comp worksheets, how to you level them at “grades 2-6”? Quite a gap!

I have neglected the earlier grades for a long. I am beginning anew at this website: worksheetland.com

Please join me.

it so excellent helpful for English language learning

Mary Levtzow

Thank you for sharing and caring about each child’s potential.

Excellent website!!!

Thank you for allowing some things to still be available without having to sign your life away first.

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  • Author's Purpose Worksheets
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Reading Comprehension Worksheets

Reading Comprehension Worksheets

Here are some very basic passages for students in kindergarten. Each passage is accompanied by several simple reading comprehension questions.

This page has reading comprehension passages for students reading at a first-grade level. Each one includes a page of simple comprehension questions, and many include a vocabulary activity and writing prompt.

Here is a collection of articles and stories written for students at a second-grade reading level. Each worksheet includes questions to help test your students' understanding of the material.

Check out our fiction stories, poems, and nonfiction articles written for students reading at a third-grade level. Each passage is accompanied by reading comprehension questions.

Whether you're looking for nonfiction animal articles, biographies on important historical figures, or fun fiction stories, this page has your fourth-grade reading comprehension needs covered.

We have a large collection of fifth-grade fiction passages, nonfiction articles, and poems. Worksheets include reading comprehension questions to test readers' understanding of the text.

Here you can access our wide variety of biographical articles, nonfiction articles, and poems specifically written for sixth graders.

Take a look at our middle school reading comprehension worksheets, designed specifically for those reading at a seventh-grade level or beyond.

Print articles on countless animal species, from aardvarks and armadillos to wombats and zebras. Each article has comprehension questions and a vocab activity.

Here you'll find a selection of biographical reading comprehension passages. Biographies cover historical figures such as Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, George Washington, Dr. Martin Luther King, Gertrude Ederle, and many, many more.

We have a huge collection of original poems for students at all elementary grade levels.

Small groups of students can perform these short readers' theater scripts in the classroom.

On this page you'll find a large selection of phonics-based mini-books for young readers.

This page has handy printables such as book report forms, literature circle roles, book bingo, and other reading worksheets.

This page has some very short reading comprehension passages at a 2nd grade level. The passages and questions all fit on a single page.

These third grade reading passages are very short. Read the paragraph(s) and answer the questions.

Here is a complete listing of the English Language Arts content on this site.

This is a complete list of the phonics worksheets available on Super Teacher Worksheets.

This section has alphabet activities, phonics worksheets, basic sentence building activities, and more.

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reading comprehension task

Reading is a skill many people take for granted, but the act of reading and properly comprehending a text is a complex and interactive process. It requires several different brain functions to work together and most often requires one to puzzle through multiple layers of context and meaning.

Because reading comprehension is so complicated, we can often find ourselves understanding the most basic interpretation of a text, but missing the emotional core or the "big picture." Or we might just find our brains spinning with no clue at all as to what a text is attempting to convey.

But luckily for everyone who struggles in English classes, on standardized tests, or in daily life, reading comprehension can be improved upon (and it's never too late to start!). In this guide, I explain step-by-step how to improve reading comprehension over time and offer tips for boosting your understanding as you read.

What Is Reading Comprehension?

Reading comprehension is the understanding of what a particular text means and the ideas the author is attempting to convey, both textual and subtextual. In order to read any text, your brain must process not only the literal words of the piece, but also their relationship with one another, the context behind the words, how subtle language and vocabulary usage can impact emotion and meaning behind the text, and how the text comes together as a larger, coherent whole.

For instance, let's look at the first line from Jane Austen's novel, Pride and Prejudice :

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

Now, a completely literal interpretation of the text, just based on word-meaning, would have us believe that 'all rich men want wives.' But the context, word choice, and phrasing of the text actually belie that interpretation. By using the phrases "universally acknowledged" and " must be in want of" (emphasis ours), the text is conveying a subtle sarcasm to the words. Instead of it being an actual truth that 'rich men want wives,' this one sentence instantly tells us that we're reading about a society preoccupied with marriage, while also implying that the opening statement is something people in that society may believe, but that isn't necessarily true.

In just a few short words, Austen conveys several ideas to the reader about one of the main themes of the story, the setting, and what the culture and people are like. And she does so all the while seeming to contradict the literal words of the piece.

Without practice in reading comprehension, nuances like these can become lost. And so it can happen that someone may find themselves reading, but not truly comprehending the full meaning of a text.

As you can see, reading comprehension involves many processes happening in your brain at once, and thus it can be easy for some aspects of a text to get lost in the muddle. But the good news for anyone who struggles is that reading comprehension is a skill just like any other. It must be learned through practice, focus, and diligence, but it absolutely CAN be learned.

Why Reading Comprehension Is Important

Proper reading comprehension can be difficult, so why bother? Even though learning how to properly read and comprehend texts is a complicated process, it is a necessary skill to master, both for work and for pleasure.

You will need to know how to read and interpret all kinds of different texts—both on the basic, literal level and on a more in-depth level—throughout your schooling, in college, and in the working world (as well as in your recreation time!). If we think about "reading" just as a literal or surface understanding of a piece and "reading comprehension" as the complete understanding, a person can only get by in the world on pure "reading" for so long.

Reading comprehension is essential for many significant aspects of daily life, such as:

  • Reading, understanding, and analyzing literature in your English classes
  • Reading and understanding texts from your other class subjects, such as history, math, or science
  • Doing well on both the written and math sections of the SAT (or all five sections of the ACT)
  • Understanding and engaging with current events presented in written form, such as news reports
  • Properly understanding and responding to any and all other workplace correspondence, such as essays, reports, memos, and analyses
  • Simply taking pleasure in written work on your own leisure time

reading comprehension task

Just like with any goal or skill, we can master reading comprehension one step at a time.

How to Improve Reading Comprehension: 3 Steps

Because reading comprehension is a skill that improves like any other, you can improve your understanding with practice and a game plan.

Dedicate yourself to engaging in a combination of both "guided" and "relaxed" reading practice for at least two to three hours a week. Guided practice will involve structure and focused attention, like learning new vocabulary words and testing yourself on them, while relaxed practice will involve merely letting yourself read and enjoy reading without pressure for at least one to two hours a week. (Note: if you already read for pleasure, add at least one more hour of pleasure-reading per week.)

By combining reading-for-studying and reading-for-pleasure, you'll be able to improve your reading skill without relegating reading time to the realm of "work" alone. Reading is a huge part of our daily lives, and improving your comprehension should never come at the cost of depriving yourself of the pleasure of the activity.

So what are some of the first steps for improving your reading comprehension level?

Step 1: Understand and Reevaluate How You're Currently Reading

Before you can improve your reading comprehension, you must first understand how you're currently reading and what your limitations are.

Start by selecting excerpts from different texts with which you are unfamiliar—text books, essays, novels, news reports, or any kind of text you feel you particularly struggle to understand—and read them as you would normally. As you read, see if you can notice when your attention, energy, or comprehension of the material begins to flag.

If your comprehension or concentration tends to lag after a period of time, start to slowly build up your stamina. For instance, if you continually lose focus at the 20 minute mark every time you read, acknowledge this and push yourself to slowly increase that time, rather than trying to sit and concentrate on reading for an hour or two at a stretch. Begin by reading for your maximum amount of focused time (in this case, twenty minutes), then give yourself a break. Next time, try for 22 minutes. Once you've mastered that, try for 25 and see if you can still maintain focus. If you can, then try for thirty.

If you find that your concentration or comprehension starts to lag again , take a step back on your timing before pushing yourself for more. Improvement comes with time, and it'll only cause frustration if you try to rush it all at once.

Alternatively, you may find that your issues with reading comprehension have less to do with the time spent reading than with the source material itself. Perhaps you struggle to comprehend the essential elements of a text, the context of a piece, character arcs or motivation, books or textbooks with densely packed information, or material that is heavily symbolic. If this is the case, then be sure to follow the tips below to improve these areas of reading comprehension weakness.

Improving your reading comprehension level takes time and practice, but understanding where your strengths and weaknesses stand now is the first step towards progress.

Step 2: Improve Your Vocabulary

Reading and comprehension rely on a combination of vocabulary, context, and the interaction of words. So you must be able to understand each moving piece before you can understand the text as a whole.

If you struggle to understand specific vocabulary, it's sometimes possible to pick up meaning through context clues (how the words are used in the sentence or in the passage), but it's always a good idea to look up the definitions of words with which you aren't familiar. As you read, make sure to keep a running list of words you don't readily recognize and make yourself a set of flashcards with the words and their definitions. Dedicate fifteen minutes two or three times a week to and quizzing yourself on your vocab flashcards.

To get started, you'll need some blank index cards and a system to keep them organized. These basic cards are an affordable option that are also available in fun colors . You can keep them organized with plastic baggies or rubber bands, or you can get an organizer .

Alternatively, try these easy-flip flashcards that include binder clips. Though we strongly recommend making your own flashcards, you can also buy pre-made ones —the best option is Barron's 1100 Words You Need to Know , a series of exercises to master key words and idioms.

In order to retain your vocabulary knowledge, you must employ a combination of practiced memorization (like studying your flashcards) and make a point of using these new words in your verbal and written communication. Guided vocabulary practice like this will give you access to new words and their meanings as well as allow you to properly retain them.

Step 3: Read for Pleasure

The best way to improve your reading comprehension level is through practice. And the best way to practice is to have fun with it!

Make reading a fun activity, at least on occasion, rather than a constant chore. This will motivate you to engage with the text and embrace the activity as part of your daily life (rather than just your study/work life). As you practice and truly engage with your reading material, improvement will come naturally.

Begin by reading texts that are slightly below your age and grade level (especially if reading is frustrating or difficult for you). This will take pressure off of you and allow you to relax and enjoy the story. Here are some fun, easy reads that we recommend to get you started:

  • Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roksani Chokshi
  • Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
  • Ghost   by Jason Reynolds
  • The Westing Game by Ellen Rankin
  • From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler   by E.L. Konigsburg
  • The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson
  • I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
  • Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone   by J.K .Rowling

Once you feel more comfortable reading and practicing your comprehension strategies (tips in the next section), go ahead and allow yourself to read at whatever reading or age level you feel like. Even if you feel that you don't understand some of the text right now—or even a large portion of it!—if you enjoy yourself and give it your best shot, you'll find that your reading comprehension levels will improve over time.

reading comprehension task

Reading these problematic passages aloud can often help circumvent that block and help you to form a visual of what the text is trying to convey.

Tip 3: Re-read (or Skim) Previous Sections of the Text

For the most part, reading is a personal activity that happens entirely in your head. So don't feel you have to read just like anyone else if "typical" methods don't work for you. Sometimes it can make the most sense to read (or re-read) a text out of order.

It is often helpful to glance backwards through a piece of text (or even re-read large sections) to remind yourself of any information you need and have forgotten—what happened previously, what a particular word means, who a person was...the list is endless.

Previous sentences, sections, or even whole chapters can provide helpful context clues. Re-reading these passages will help to refresh your memory so that you can better understand and interpret later sections of the text.

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Tip 4: Skim or Read Upcoming Sections of the Text

Just like with the previous step, don't feel that the only way to read and understand a text is to work through it completely linearly. Allow yourself the freedom to take apart the text and put it back together again in whichever way makes the most sense to you.

Sometimes a current confusion in a work will be explained later on in the text, and it can help you to know that explanations are upcoming or even just to read them ahead of time.

So skip forward or backwards, re-read or read ahead as you need to, take the piece in whatever order you need to in order to make sense of the text. Not everyone thinks linearly, and not everyone best understands texts linearly either.

Tip 5: Discuss the Text With a Friend (Even an Imaginary Friend)

Sometimes discussing what you know so far about a text can help clear up any confusion. If you have a friend who hasn't read the text in question, then explain it to them in your own words, and discuss where you feel your comprehension is lacking. You'll find that you've probably understood more than you think once you've been forced to explain it to someone who's completely unfamiliar with the piece.

Even if no one else is in the room, trying to teach or discuss what a passage says or means with "someone else" can be extremely beneficial. In fact, software engineers call this technique "rubber duck debugging," wherein they explain a coding problem to a rubber duck. This forces them to work through a problem aloud, which has proven time and time again to help people solve problems. So if a piece of text has your head spinning from trying to work through it by yourself, start chatting with your nearest friend/pet/rubber duck. You'll be surprised with how much easier it is to understand a text once you've talked it through with someone.

Even if that someone is a duck.

reading comprehension task

The Take-Aways

Improving reading comprehension takes time and effort, but it can be done. Be patient with yourself, work through your reading comprehension steps, and try not to get frustrated with yourself if you feel your progress is slow or if you feel you're "falling behind." You will utilize your reading skills throughout your life, so go at a pace that works for you, and take care to maintain that balance between reading for pure pleasure and reading for dedicated improvement.

As you begin to incorporate more and more reading into your daily life, you'll find that comprehension will become easier, and reading will become more fun. In every piece of text, there are worlds of meaning to explore, and learning how to uncover them can be the ultimate rewarding journey.

What's Next?

Can't get enough reading? Whether as part of your reading practice or just for fun, check out our picks for the 31 best books to read in high school.

Problems with procrastination? Whether you're studying for the SAT's or studying your reading comprehension vocabulary check out how to beat procrastination and get your studies back on track.

Want to earn better grades? Our guide will help you get that 4.0 you're striving for .

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

Get eBook: 5 Tips for 160+ Points

These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links PrepScholar may receive a commission.

Courtney scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT in high school and went on to graduate from Stanford University with a degree in Cultural and Social Anthropology. She is passionate about bringing education and the tools to succeed to students from all backgrounds and walks of life, as she believes open education is one of the great societal equalizers. She has years of tutoring experience and writes creative works in her free time.

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31 Effective Reading Comprehension Activities

October 30, 2023 //  by  Sean Kivi

There are hundreds of different ideas on how to help your students develop their reading comprehension. No matter what technique you choose, the goal is to be able to check your students’ understanding of a text. Here’s a list of the top 31 reading comprehension activities that we find to be most varied and beneficial for developing numerous areas of comprehension. So, without further adieu, get exploring to find a few new approaches to try with your class!

1. Roll & Chat Dice

Who would’ve thought that die could be used to assess understanding? This activity relies on just two dies to accomplish just that! Once your students have finished their class reader, have them work in partners or small groups to roll dice and answer the corresponding questions provided. Best of all- you can adapt the questions for any grade level or subject!

Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers

Looking for fun and educational kits for kids? Check out our Favorite Subscription Boxes for Kids

2. WANTED Poster

Here’s an arty pursuit to tie into your next reading comprehension session! Creating a wanted poster for a character in the story that your kids are reading will highlight their understanding of that character. Simply have them draw a picture and add some character traits, and a few actions taken by their characters to demonstrate their knowledge.

Learn More: Education.com

3. Story Cheeseburger

Get your kiddos revved up about reading comprehensions by turning this process into a burger-building expedition! To do so, have your students link each part of a hamburger with a different element of a story! This will help you see if they’ve grasped the plot as well as the other elements, or if there are a few gaps in their understanding.

Learn More: Unique Teaching Resources

4. Reading Comprehension Worksheets 

Nothing like a good ol’ worksheet to ring a concept home! Here’s a plethora of worksheets that include reading passages with comprehension questions that you can quickly print out. They’re useful for teaching different reading strategies and don’t take up too much of your planning and prep time!

Learn More: K5 Learning

5. Make a Timeline

Test your students’ understanding by having them map out a timeline. By doing so, they’ll exhibit their knowledge of sequential events and be able to effectively relay the most important facts from their reading passages.

Learn more: Education.com

6. Yellow Brick Road Retelling

This is an excellent strategy to get your kids involved in active reading. All that’s required is for them to break a passage or story apart piece by piece. Using a piece of poster board, images, sticky notes, and markers, help your learners separate key information in terms of outlining various elements. In the end, they should be able to use the board to retell the chosen tale in a cohesive manner!

Learn More: Just Cara Carroll

7. Anticipation Guide

reading comprehension task

This is a perfect pre-reading activity to get your students to better understand the reading process in more detail. They’ll need to make some predictions about the story by sharing if they agree or disagree with the statements provided in the anticipation guide. We suggest that you return to this guide after reading to reveal whether or not their predictions were accurate!

Learn More: Reading Rockets

8. Question Ball

This after-reading activity will surely increase student engagement in your class! By taking an inflatable beach ball and writing the 5 W’s on each colored stripe: who, what, when, where, and why- your students can throw the ball around the class and answer questions about the story. Whichever question stem is touching their right hand when they catch the ball can be the start of your crafted question.

Learn More: Coffee Cups and Crayons

9. Lego Retelling

legocarle-1.jpg

This idea is most suited for use with younger learners who may not have started reading and writing journeys in full yet. Have them retell a story by building lego images that represent different parts of the book. They can then visually piece together scenes as they describe what they’ve built.

Learn More: The Educators Pin On It

10. Story Telling Bracelet

Here’s a simple tactile tool that could be just what your kiddos need to help them retell stories. This teaching procedure involves your kids creating a beaded bracelet that assigns each colored bead to a particular part of a text. For example, yellow for the setting, green for the characters, and blue for the conflict. As you ask them to retell the story, they can touch each bead in an attempt to prompt themselves to recall some of the most important elements of the plot!

Learn More: Growing Book By Book

11. Reading Cheat Sheets

Need to help your students understand critical reading skills? Use these cheat sheets to provide them with expert details and things to bear in mind while they read a text. Simply print out and laminate the cheat sheets or bookmarks and use them to prompt your kiddos to think or discuss different elements of the text. 

Learn More: Research Parent

12. Vocabulary Skits

Improving your students’ vocabulary skills will have a positive impact on their reading comprehension. That’s why we’ve chosen this task for your students to turn selected vocabulary words into short skits. Playing charades and guessing which vocabulary word their classmates are acting out will spice up the often-dry task of vocabulary learning and improve reading comprehension that much faster!

Learn More: YouTube

13. Painting the Scene

Visualizing is a fantastic strategy that can help your students create mental pictures to better recall story elements. Ask your students to close their eyes so that they can’t refer to the illustrations as you read a descriptive book aloud. Then, have them open their eyes and share what they saw before drawing their vivid mental images on a pair of pre-cut paper sunglasses. 

Learn More: Raise the Bar Reading

14. Diary Entries from Characters

reading comprehension task

Time to get in character! After reading, task your learners with writing a diary entry from the point of view of one of the characters. Thinking like their storybook characters will nurture empathy and emotional intelligence, as well as show you the traits they’ve picked up on and can recall with ease, whilst also providing insight into which areas may need a little more revision. 

Learn More: Twinkl

15. Plotting With Mind Maps

reading comprehension task

Doodles take on a new purpose with this next idea! Ask your students to create mind maps that connect the dots between characters, themes, and events. This endeavor offers a fresh angle for grasping the narrative’s intricate storyline and is an ideal complement to verbal discussion and traditional book reports.

Learn More: Template.net

16. Expanding Vocabulary with the ‘Word of the Day’

reading comprehension task

Building vocabulary will definitely help your learners comprehend difficult text. Pick a word from your current class text each day and have your kiddos analyze and learn its definition. Then, the next time this word appears in one of their passages, they’ll already recognize it and know its meaning!  

Learn More: Lizard Learning

17. Cause-and-Effect Diagrams

reading comprehension task

This activity is great for utilization either during or after a reading session. Simply have your little detectives search for cause-and-effect relationships within their text before recording the examples in the provided diagram. You can also adapt this approach by providing them with the cause and asking them to find the effect and vice versa. 

Learn More: Mrs. Warner’s Learning Community

18. Storyboarding the Text

reading comprehension task

This activity will intrigue your up-and-coming movie directors! Your students can exhibit their understanding of a narrative by laying out key events on a storyboard. This visually captivating task will help you facilitate an intuitive grasp of the plot sequence whilst highlighting the most important parts of a story by getting your learners to develop detailed pictures and short captions. 

Learn More: Movavi

19. Reciprocal Teaching

reading comprehension task

Reciprocal teaching is all about activating peer power! Have your students break into small groups and take turns adopting teacher-student roles. The ‘teachers’ will guide discussions and ask probing questions about the text, while the students respond with what they know before switching roles. 

Learn More: Smore

20. Quiz Creation

reading comprehension task

Test makers, take your positions! Challenge your students to design quizzes about any given text. To up the stakes, their quiz should be complete with multiple-choice, true/false, and short-answer questions. Talk about a fun role reversal that lets them show off their grasp of the material while reinforcing key takeaways.

Learn More: Canva

21. Peek Into The Future

reading comprehension task

Psychic reading or educated guess anyone? Before diving into a new text, have your students jot down their predictions on sticky notes and paste them on an anchor chart that displays a crystal ball. Later, get them to compare these forecasts to the actual outcomes. 

22. Puppet Show Retelling

Budding theater producers this one’s for you! Encourage your students to reenact pivotal scenes using puppets. This role play activity will amplify their grasp of the characters, storylines, and sequences alike. 

23. Writing Alternate Endings

reading comprehension task

What if is a powerful question. Once you’ve finished a class book, urge your students to rewrite the ending or even draft a sequel. Alternate realities are more than just creative exercises; they offer a deep dive into understanding characters and their motivations. Plus, they have the potential to ignite discussions on how a single twist can alter the narrative landscape whilst working to reinforce original content and better bind it to memory.

Learn More: Teach Starter

24. Character Interviews

In this activity, one student will role play a storybook character, and the other will act as a journalist. Conducting fictional interviews to explore the psyche and motivations of characters in a newsroom-like setting is bound to get your kiddos more familiar with the content that they’ve read. 

25. Breaking Down Themes

reading comprehension task

Theme hunters, let’s go! Assign your students the task of dissecting the major themes of a story- discovering recurring motifs and underlying messages along the way. They’ll need to provide text evidence to support their claims and display their comprehension! 

Learn More: Easy Teacher Worksheets

26. Annotation Walk

reading comprehension task

Annotating is an awesome strategy that can help your kiddos actively engage with a text as they read. By using symbols like an exclamation mark to note a surprising element, or a magnifying glass to highlight something that they want to know more about, your learners can note and track their thoughts on sticky notes! Once complete, hang posters with the symbols around your classroom and have them walk around; adding their annotations onto each display. In the end, spend time dissecting the elements together. 

Learn More: Comprehensible Classroom

27. Text-to-Text Connections

Your students are bound to read tons of different stories and texts throughout the school year. This activity will prompt them to recall texts they’ve previously read and make connections with texts that they’re currently reading. They might compare characters, themes, or conflicts that appeared across texts; tapping into past learning and revising like never before! 

28. Flash Fiction

Flash fiction is a strategy that tasks your students with telling a story with not too much detail, but just enough to keep their classmates engaged. These micro-stories will have maximum impact as they display their ability to explore themes and character development in a shortened version of the plot! 

29. Graphic Organizers

reading comprehension task

Graphic organizers are such a great tool that we find teachers using them across all subject areas! Here’s a plethora of options to incorporate with different reading skills. From Venn diagrams to 5-finger summaries- there’s something that each and every one of your students can use when dissecting their next fiction and nonfiction books!   

Learn More: First Grade Blue Skies

30. Newspaper Reporting

Newspaper reporting is a fun activity that allows your students to act as investigative journalists! Assign your students the task of crafting newspaper reports about significant events from a text. This real-world task will hone their summarizing skills, sharpen their focus on key points, and elucidate their importance. 

31. Book Club Discussions

reading comprehension task

Why not start a book club in your classroom? Divide your students into small groups for book club-like discussions. Here, they can swap interpretations, address lingering questions, and delve deeper into the text’s mysteries. 

Learn More: ThoughtCo

These are just a few of the best ways to make reading more accessible for your learners. The majority of these activities can be expanded upon to meet the specific needs of your readers, whether that be sequencing events or providing a detailed analysis of character.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are comprehension activities.

Comprehension activities are activities or games that can be used to help your students to demonstrate what they know about a text. This usually covers but is not limited to, setting, plot, and character. Comprehension activities can be expanded to include other ideas too, like the meaning of the text, and can go beyond the details included within the text, such as in terms of contextual information surrounding the creation of the book.

What is the best way to teach comprehension?

Unfortunately, there is no definitive “best” way to teach comprehension to your kids, as each student is different and will respond to different activities. However, one thing that will definitely work is to make comprehension an enjoyable process. Try using the activities above to help with this and avoid simply completing tests or quizzes, as these will not make your student engaged.

How can I improve my comprehension?

Try to go beyond simple ideas of comprehension. Your basic comprehension of a text should include the key events (or plot), the setting (where and when the story happens), and characters (the people or things that the text is about). You should try to expand beyond this by thinking about the meaning of the text. What message was the writer trying to put across? Reading comprehension goes beyond the words on the page – you need to think about the writer’s craft, too.

What are the 3 main types of reading strategies?

The key reading strategies that you will likely encounter are scanning, skimming, and detailed reading. Scanning involves looking for specific information in a text, such as a keyword or detail. Skimming is slightly more in-depth as it is about understanding the main idea of a text by reading small chunks of the passage. Detailed reading is the slowest reading process but is the one that can help you get the most information from a text. Using this last strategy, your kids will understand approximately 80% of the text. Even so, each of these strategies is vital for teaching your students how to read effectively for information.

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Course: LSAT   >   Unit 1

Getting started with reading comprehension.

  • Catalog of question types | Reading comprehension
  • Main point | Quick guide
  • Recognition | Quick guide
  • Clarifying meaning | Quick guide
  • Purpose of reference | Quick guide
  • Organizing information | Quick guide
  • Inferences about views | Quick guide
  • Inferences about information | Quick guide
  • Inferences about attitudes | Quick guide
  • Applying to new contexts | Quick guide
  • Principles and analogies | Quick guide
  • Additional evidence | Quick guide
  • Primary purpose | Quick guide

Reading Comprehension overview

  • Duration: 35 minutes
  • Length: 26-28 passage-based questions (divided into four reading passages).
  • Subject matter: Four passages are drawn from four areas: Law, Social Science, Science, and Humanities. Three of the passages will ask you questions about a single text. One of the passages, known sometimes as the “Comparative Reading set", will feature two texts, and the questions will focus on how they relate to each other.
  • 1-2 passages: Total length of the text will be about 50-60 lines. The topics are diverse, and many may be unfamiliar to you.
  • Questions: You’ll be asked several questions about the text. Some of the questions can be answered with information explicitly stated in the passage, but many questions ask about what can be inferred.
  • Choices: You’ll be presented with five choices. Only one of them is correct. You’ll see us refer to the correct choice as the “answer” throughout your practice sessions.

What can I do to tackle the Reading Comprehension section most effectively?

  • Why did the passage’s author include this quote? Was it supporting a claim?
  • Why did the author include this example?
  • What role does each claim, each paragraph play in the text’s overall argument?

All Reading Comprehension questions are not created equal!

Dos and don’ts.

  • Don’t try to read faster: LSAT Reading Comprehension isn’t about speed and memorization. Students who consider themselves slower readers can be very successful on the test, by learning active reading strategies to identify the most important information. Some parts are okay to read less carefully, for example, because they contain details supporting a larger claim or point.
  • Don’t add your own soundtrack: The LSAT doesn’t require any outside expertise in the many topics it presents to you. All of the information that you need will be presented in the passage. When you bring your own experience, knowledge and opinions about a topic into the mix, you may add your own unwarranted assumptions which will lead you to wrong choices. Strong critical readers avoid this common LSAT pitfall!
  • Don’t time yourself too early on: Accuracy, then speed! When learning a new skill, it’s better to leave timing considerations to the side until you’ve increased your skill level enough to warrant timing. If you were learning piano, you wouldn’t play a piece at full-speed before you’d practiced the passages very slowly, and then less slowly, and then less slowly still.
  • Do read with your pencil: Reading actively is helpful to understanding reading comprehension passages and not “zoning out” while you read. Many students like to underline or circle keywords, such as “however”, “therefore”, “argues that”, “first/second”, and many others that you’ll learn throughout your studies with us. If you’re reading with your pencil, you’re much less likely to wonder what you just read in the last minute, and you can focus on the structure and shifts in the action.
  • Do be nimble: You don’t have to do the passages and questions in order, or even to do a given question at all. Many students find success maximizing their score by skipping a select handful of questions entirely, either because they know a question will take too long to solve, or because they just don’t know how to solve it.
  • Do learn about all of the question types: An effective approach to a main point question is very different than an effective approach to an inference question, even though the passage is the same.
  • Do spend time on the fundamentals: Effective reading strategies take time to learn and implement consistently. For example, understand how to identify important keywords (and why they’re important) before practicing many passages in a row. The hints and explanations in the system will help with this—a lot! Other key skills include characterizing the relationships between various points of view and identifying the purpose of a paragraph. Be patient with yourself!
  • Do honor the precision of language: If the author writes, “This explanation isn’t well-supported, however”, an inference question might ask you what the author’s attitude towards the explanation is. A wrong choice would be something like, “vehement skepticism”, whereas the answer might be, “cautious doubt.” Many students are too approximate in their reading and it hurts their score on the LSAT; in other words, they see some degree of disagreement and they believe that any choice that expresses disagreement will be correct. They may see the word “most” in the passage and equate it to “all” by mistake.

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By Sara Marye Leave a Comment

5 Tricks for Using Task Cards to Improve Reading Comprehension

Comprehension is such a big focus for upper elementary reading teachers. And no matter how successful your students are, I bet chances are you want to improve reading comprehension for all students.

When I was teaching reading, I would love to find specific routines, lesson structures, and resources that I knew would help my students grow as readers. One of my favorite resources to use as a tool to help improve reading comprehension was reading task cards.

Reading task cards are common tools used in classrooms everywhere, but they sometimes are used in a way that creates busywork for our students and are thought of as not creating authentic reading experiences that can help students improve reading comprehension.

I’m here to tell you that task cards, when used effectively, can absolutely help your students improve reading comprehension. Today I’m sharing five quick ways to think differently about you can use reading task cards in your reading block to make it more engaging, more effective, and more student-centered!

How can reading task cards improve reading comprehension?

  • Reading task cards have short reading passages. When you are trying to improve reading comprehension, students spend a lot of time reading…. which you would think is a good thing. But the reality of it is we need to be worried about reading fatigue in our students. This is why task cards are a great option. Most reading task cards have super short texts (half a page or less) and can be read from beginning to end in just a few minutes. Many reading passages are so long, especially in upper grades. If you have limited time for independent practice, students can spend the entire time JUST reading the text, and they don’t get any time to analyze the text or respond in any way.
  • Reading task cards are usually skill-specific. If you let your students choose what they want to read during independent reading time, you can’t always guarantee that they will be reading a text that will align with the objective for your whole group lesson. For example, if you’re teaching your students all about theme during your whole group lesson, but you have students reading nonfiction, they really can’t practice finding the theme independently with their nonfiction book. But if you have a set of skill-specific reading task cards, then you can give your students a short task card to “practice” with before they jump into their independent reading. That way, you ensure your students will get practice finding the theme of a text and then can go on to read their nonfiction book just for the fun of it.

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Five Tips to Improve Reading Comprehension With Task Cards

Tip #1: offer students choice.

If you’ve ever downloaded a set of task cards, you’ve likely noticed that they often come in sets of 24, 48, 96, etc. In reality, our students should never be asked to do something 24 times in a row before we determine mastery. More than likely, you can tell if a student has mastered a specific skill after 2-3 rounds of practice. But there is a benefit of having so many reading task card options within a specific set. And that’s to give your students a choice. Rather than asking your students to read all 24 task cards, ask them to select out the 3-4 that interest them the most and then read and respond to those task cards.

I have talked about the benefits of choice in previous blog posts, and I will say again that choice instills a deeper sense of ownership, which in turn can promote engagement, grit, and growth!

Tip #2: Use Graphic Organizers to Scaffold the Transfer of Skills

So often, tasks cards are used in the classroom as independent practice, and usually to target a specific skill. If students are using reading task cards to identify something like the theme in a short text, it can be difficult for some students to read the text, pull evidence about the theme from the text, then formulate their own thinking and put it into writing. That is a lot of work for the brain to do at once!

One of the best tools to help students scaffold their thinking is to give them a graphic organizer. Graphic organizers are a great tool to improve reading comprehension and can help bridge that thinking gap from how a student is processing the text, to what they eventually put on paper. Additionally, graphic organizers guide students through their responses, so they stay on track.

Any graphic organizer that you would assign to students for a book or longer text, you can assign to a short task card.

IMG_3354 (1).JPG

Tip #3: Focus on Students’ Thinking and Making Connections

Many task cards focus on multiple choice answers, which can be great in certain situations (like right before testing season), but if we are looking to improve reading comprehension, we need to make sure that the focus is not simply on the right answer, but also on the students’ thinking about the answer!

So, if you are using task cards that box students into choosing a correct answer, I would recommend asking them to also jot down how they decided on that answer so you can see their thinking. The real teachable moments are pulled from that bit of student writing!

I love giving students sticky notes or other places for them to stop-and-jot their thinking about the text. Even if they have to answer the multiple-choice or open-ended question, giving them the space to share their thinking and any connections they made to the text can be beneficial.

Tip #4: Reuse Task Cards for Multiple Skill Practice

I love when I can create, find, or buy a resource and figure out how to use it in multiple ways in my classroom. And task cards are some of the best resources to use and then reuse over and over and over again. One of the best ways to utilize task cards is to use them to help teach and practice more than one reading skill.

Let’s say you found a set of task cards that were created to help you teach your students to focus on character traits and feelings. You printed and prepped those task cards and used them for your lessons on analyzing and describing characters.

Well, why don’t you also use that same set of task cards to also teach your students how to identify the theme and how to summarize fiction stories.

If the task cards had characters, that means they were probably fictional stories… and if they were fictional stories, then you can use them to teach a whole long list of other reading skills.

And the benefit of re-using the task cards is that students are already familiar with the stories/texts and can focus their energy on the new skill. It’s also a way to help them practice close reading skills.

IMG_3703.JPG

Tip #5: Use Task Cards for More than Just Independent Practice

Because the texts on task cards are short and skill-based, they are perfect for independent practice. But if you want to help students improve reading comprehension, you can use them for so many other parts of your reading block.

  • Use them during small strategy groups. I love using task cards during strategy groups ! Since they are short and skill-based, they are the perfect tool for your small group lessons.
  • They are also great for independent reading conferences . If you struggle with getting conferences in that are meaningful, because you’re not hearing your students read leveled, targeted texts often enough, re-purposing task cards are a great way to work that in, without spending too much time!
  • You can even use them during your mini-lessons . We typically think of using picture books for the mentor text during our mini-lessons, but you can use any text that will help you model the objective for your lesson. Sometimes it can be really helpful to model new learning to students with a variety of texts. If you plan on having students students practice using task cards, then consider using them every now and then as part of your whole-group model.

Put it into practice…

So hopefully, you have a few ideas on how to use reading task cards to help improve reading comprehension.

The first step in getting started with applying these ideas to your classroom is to make sure that you have a set of reading task cards. If you don’t, you can find a whole bundle of task cards in my TPT store.

Once you have your task cards, pick just one of these tips to get started with. You don’t have to do all five to start seeing the benefits. So pick one tip and plan on implementing it this week with your students. I would love to hear which tip resonates with you the most. Let me know in the comments below.

Happy Teaching!

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Find out how children build their understanding of a text using a combination of background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, and inference.

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Supporting comprehension at home

Find out how to best support your child’s reading comprehension at home using our top tips.

Find out more

Comprehension at school

As part of learning to read, your child will learn about reading comprehension throughout their time at primary school. The focus will probably move more heavily towards comprehension and away from phonics from Year 2 onwards, as your child becomes more confident with word reading.

What your child will learn

Find out how your child will learn to read at school:

Reading comprehension: Age 3–4 (Early Years)

  • listen to stories and sometimes join in, retelling them in their own words
  • sing songs and simple rhymes.

Reading comprehension: Age 4–5 (Reception / Primary 1)

  • listen to stories and retell favourites
  • recite songs and rhymes (and come up with some of their own).

Reading comprehension: Age 5–6 (Year 1 / Primary 2)

  • listen to and talk about a range of stories and texts
  • know and understand well-known stories, fairy stories, and traditional tales
  • understand books they can read and listen to.
  • discuss the meaning of the words they read
  • begin to infer (read between the lines) the feelings of characters
  • discuss the books they have read
  • explain what happened in a story, or the main topic in non-fiction
  • make connections between the story and their own life.

Reading comprehension: Age 6–7 (Year 2 / Primary 3)

  • understand both the books they can already read themselves and those they listen to
  • talk about books and poems, taking turns and listening to what others say.
  • discuss the meaning of the words they read and make connections between new words and the words they already know
  • discuss the words and phrases they like in a story
  • talk about the way a non-fiction book is structured (headings, photographs, captions, contents page and so on)
  • check that they have read a story correctly by spotting if it doesn’t make sense
  • predict what is going to happen next based on what has happened so far
  • infer the feelings and motivations of characters
  • discuss the books they have read.

Reading comprehension: Age 7–8 (Year 3 / Primary 4)

By Year 3, most of the hard work of learning to read has been done. The main focus moves on to comprehension and building the habits that make a confident and keen reader. Your child will learn to:

  • read a wide range of books and retell some stories orally
  • read aloud and perform poems and play scripts
  • talk about interesting words and phrases
  • read between the lines and use evidence from the text when giving their opinion
  • predict what might happen next
  • use dictionaries to check the meaning of words.
  • talk about the structure of non-fiction books
  • spot themes (recurring ideas) in a book
  • ask questions about a book to help them to understand it
  • summarise the information or plot in a book
  • make inferences (read between the lines) about a character’s behaviour, motivation or feelings.

Reading comprehension: Age 8–9 (Year 4 / Primary 5)

In Year 4, your child will be growing ever more confident as an independent reader. They will develop their comprehension skills and build the habits that make an enthusiastic reader. Your child will learn to:

  • read a wide range of books and retell some stories
  • talk about books and poems, take turns, and listen to what others say

Reading comprehension: Age 9–10 (Year 5 / Primary 6)

In Year 5, your child will continue to develop their comprehension skills and build the habits that make a confident and enthusiastic reader. Your child will learn to:

  • read and talk about a wide range of fiction, poetry, plays, non-fiction, and reference books
  • recommend books to their friends, giving reasons for their choices
  • talk about themes in the books they read and make comparisons between them
  • learn a range of poetry by heart and read poems and playscripts aloud with expression
  • talk about how (and why) authors use language.
  • check that the book makes sense to them as they read it
  • compare different books that they have read
  • summarise the information or plot in a book and explain what they have read to another person
  • make inferences (read between the lines) about a character’s behaviour, motivation or feelings
  • ask questions about a text to help their understanding and engagement such as ‘Where is this set?’ or ‘Why did she do that?’
  • distinguish between facts and opinions
  • locate information in non-fiction books and use this information elsewhere.

Reading comprehension: Age 10–11 (Year 6 / Primary 7)

In Year 6, your child will continue to develop as a reader, becoming increasingly independent as they prepare for secondary school. Your child will learn to:

  • identify how the language, structure, and presentation of a text contributes to its meaning
  • talk about how (and why) authors use language
  • tell the difference between fact and opinion and find information from non-fiction texts
  • talk about books, building on their own ideas and other people’s
  • talk about what they have read, including through presentations and debates.
  • make inferences (read between the lines) about a character’s behaviour, motivation or feelings

There is much more to reading than seeing a word and saying it out loud. Much, much more! When we read a book, we might be doing any number of the following tasks:

  • Understanding the meaning of new or tricky vocabulary
  • Understanding the key elements of a story such as character and setting in a story, or the main purpose of a non-fiction book
  • Summarising the key events
  • Making inferences (reading between the lines) about a character’s feelings, actions, behaviour or motivation
  • Predicting what will happen next
  • Finding information in a text
  • Comparing the book to other books we have read, or comparing different characters or their behaviour, or linking information with something we already know
  • Appreciating the language choices an author has made or the way the information is presented.
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22 Effective ESL Reading Activities Your Students Will Love

Do your ESL students sometimes struggle to understand what they’ve read?

Reading comprehension is notoriously difficult for students to learn and for teachers to teach. You have to make it interesting and effective. Otherwise, your students will lose interest and get discouraged from reading in English altogether.

In this post, I’ve compiled 22 awesome and effective ESL reading comprehension activities that your students will surely enjoy. Some are straightforward, while others require a bit of preparation prior to the main activity.

1. Pick the Right Word: Which Is It?

2. picture quiz: brown bear, what do you see, 3. connect the dots: this word goes with that picture, 4. sequence: putting humpty dumpty back together, 5. story retelling: showtime, 6. cause and effect: who solves the mystery, 7. following directions: it’s a treasure hunt, 8. multiple-choice: get it right, 9. short answers: a story within a story, 10. vocabulary focus: show and tell, 11. decoding idioms: guess what the phrase means, 12. question time: prep for the real work, 13. read and repeat: get pronunciation down pat, 14. paragraph summary: tell it another way, 15. quiz writing and giving: stump your classmates, 16. true or false: give me a thumbs-up (or down), 17. puzzle making: cut and paste, 18. taboo: don’t say that, 19. class discussions: talk it out, 20. class debates: fight it out, 21. class presentations: in-class ted talks, 22. class presentations redux: tell me about [a favorite topic], why do esl reading comprehension activities.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

Most ESL reading activities designed to test comprehension look like this:

Sarah went to the (beach/park). There, she met a friend who went to (science class/summer camp) two years ago.

You can usually find exercises like this for free on K12Reader.com and Mr. Nussbaum.com , so you don’t need to spend time making them on your own.

They’re rather cut-and-dry as far as exercises go, but if you’re new to giving out ESL reading comprehension activities or are looking for a safe option, you can always fall back on this one.

If you’re looking for a more creative version of “Pick the Right Word,” you can also craft an ESL reading comprehension activity that doesn’t necessarily involve words and sentences (as strange as that might sound).

Instead of giving students two options to choose from or having them fill in the blanks, you can give them a bunch of pictures and have them do some matching.

Using the example above ( Sarah went to the (beach/park) . ..), you can label several pictures as A, B, C and D. Picture A can be a beach, Picture B can be a park and so on. Students can then sort through the pictures, and write the correct letter corresponding to the correct image in the blank space.

Alternatively, you could also use “Connect the Dots” for the same exercise above. This works especially well with younger ESL learners, who’ll be more appreciative of colorful pictures accompanying their learning activities.

Feel free to throw in an irrelevant picture or two to make the activity a tad more tricky and interesting. It’ll also more accurately gauge whether your students actually understand the answers they’re giving out or are just guessing them.

Nursery rhymes like “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall” are engaging for ESL learners of any age.

For this activity, use pictures to retell the story and help your students remember the main plot points, characters and events of the text.

Preparation

  • Create copies of two stories. Make sure each is single-spaced and printed on a separate piece of paper. Label each story “Story 1” and “Story 2.”
  • Make a worksheet of a bunch of pictures (related to the stories you’ve created) labeled with either numbers or letters. Make sure there are spaces or lines immediately below the pictures where your students can write their answers. Depending on your class’s level, you can turn the labeling exercise into the perfect drill for practicing spelling and sentence construction.
  • Give your students the picture worksheet, and talk about what’s happening in each picture.
  • Ask your students to turn over the picture worksheet, and hand out the two stories to read.
  • After the students have finished reading, have them flip the papers with the stories over to the blank back side. Without looking at the story, students should cut out the pictures, and glue them to the back of the right story in chronological order.

If you need some inspiration for fantastic picture reading comprehension worksheets, try ESlFlow.com . There are also some interesting picture worksheets on Cal.org that  focus specifically on health literacy for ESL adults .

You’ll probably find that it’s easier and more fun to find a story online, and download images from Google to make your own picture stories.

Story retelling involves reading a text or story and then acting it out to other students. If you have students who love role play, they’ll enjoy this one and similar activities .

  • Choose from any of these short stories for ESL students , print them out and make enough copies for the whole class.
  • Divide students into small groups. Make sure the size of each group matches the number of characters in the stories you’re handing out.
  • Give each group a different story that they’ll need to act out in front of the class.
  • Prepare (or have your students prepare) a list of short answers/multiple choice/true or false questions to engage the audience and evaluate how well the actors captured the events of the story.
  • Once everything is set, it’s showtime!

Cause and effect questions help students think outside the box and better understand the ripple effect of events.

Text materials that have a mysterious plot or historical background are excellent choices, because they require students to understand the context of the mystery, the clues and the characters to fully appreciate the thrills of crime solving.

For example, you can read this interesting crime scene together with your students in class. Your objective with this activity is to answer the final question: Why isn’t Inspector Coderre satisfied with Ms. Webb’s version of the event? 

  • Divide students into groups.
  • Create a cause and effect map to capture the first part of Ms. Webb’s testimony, which ends right before the sentence, “The inspector was very sympathetic and told her that it was very natural to not want to damage somebody’s property.” For example, you can write something like “ (effect) Ms. Webb could see the study room → it was well-lit. (cause) ” or “ (cause) Ms. Webb broke a small window → to get into the house. (effect) ” It doesn’t matter how you order the cause and effect—the point is to help students notice details in the story and make an effective analysis.
  • Ask the students to identify the part of the testimony that made the detective lose his sympathy. Analyze that testimonial section with another cause and effect chart. Do they notice any inconsistencies?
  • Discuss the students’ findings in class or in small groups.

You don’t have to limit ESL reading comprehension activities to short stories. You can also facilitate hands-on activities to encourage your students to read, such as this treasure hunt game.

  • Create a map. It can be hand-drawn or printed. Give unique names to the basic geographic features of the classroom/schoolyard, so students can navigate the “rainforest” or “dark caves” without getting lost.
  • Put together a clue sheet to help locate the treasure. It should be filled with hints, codes and even secret messages for students to decode. For example, if you hid a diamond playing card on the third shelf of a bookcase in the corner, you can give the following clue: It stands in a corner with lots of pages for you to read. The diamond is on the third floor and right under a fairy tale. 
  • Hide different treasures (cards, small balls and beanies) in the classroom or schoolyard.
  • Divide your students into groups.
  • Give them the map and clue sheet to locate the treasure.
  • The first group that finds their treasure wins the game. But they’re always welcome to join other teams to help them find their treasures, too!

Multiple-choice is a classic, wonderful way to ease your students into new material. It’s also excellent for building much-needed confidence before moving on to more challenging ways of checking reading comprehension.

You’ll want to use “scaling” in your multiple choice questions—i.e., making each question slightly more difficult than the one before it. This way, your students will be challenged just enough to keep going.

To get started:

  • Ask students to read a short story, article or blog post. 
  • Give them a few concise multiple-choice questions afterward.
  • Go over the questions and answers as a class.

In this activity, your aim is to get students to dig deeper beneath the surface of what they’re reading. You want them to go beyond answering questions about the events and characters in the story, and talk about related topics as well.

For example, if a short story features lovers who are of the same gender, the students might want to formulate short answers about the concept of homosexuality. (Of course, if this is a taboo topic in the area where you’re teaching, or your students aren’t at the level where they can talk about such topics yet, you may want to pick an easier subject that’s less emotionally charged or controversial.) 

There are a lot of ways to go about this activity. You can:

  • Give students time to read the story in class.
  • Assign the story as homework.
  • Pair students up, and have them develop short answers together.
  • Have pairs read their short answers to other pairs.

This exercise is a great way to put some of your students’ newly learned words to good use. Plus, you don’t have to search far for new words—the ones that appear in the assigned reading will do.

All you have to do is:

  • Pair students up.
  • Have them underline key words in the target text.
  • Have them look up any words they don’t know.
  • Have students present their vocabulary terms to their classmates.

Decoding phrases, especially idioms, can be tricky for most students. That’s why it’s a good idea to devote an entire activity to this concept alone.

  • Scan the assigned or target text for idioms that may be difficult to decode based on context alone.
  • Compile these words and phrases, and print them on a worksheet.
  • Ask your students to read the collection of phrases, and have them write down or discuss what they think the phrases mean. Be careful not to use too many phrases, or you’ll bore the life out of your students and discourage them from reading the assigned or target text further. 
  • Once everyone is done, explain the phrases to the students. If you speak your students’ mother tongue, you can also judiciously use the bilingual method of teaching English . Ask them if they have similar idioms in their language.
  • Challenge your students to write sentences using the new idioms, either in class or for homework. This allows you to check for comprehension and tweak accordingly.

Often, ESL reading activities involve answering questions after the text has been read. For this activity, it’ll be the other way around. 

Pre-reading questions are great for reading comprehension because:

  • They orient the reader to the genre, topic and purpose of the text.
  • They allow the reader to activate their knowledge of related vocabulary, and glean the key words and phrases they should seek to understand in the reading.
  • They provide a focus for the reading of the text, so students know what information is important and what isn’t.
  • They save a ton of time during reading comprehension tests.

Encourage your students to underline key words and phrases, and make notes and translations where necessary. This will help them avoid the common error of not answering the question as it’s written on the paper. A little time spent going over their notes here can improve the overall accuracy and relevance of their answers.

Reading comprehension work gives you an excellent opportunity to get in some pronunciation activities for your ESL students . These will enhance their speaking and listening skills all at once.

For example, when working on a text in class, you can:

  • Read a sentence in the target text.
  • Have the students repeat the sentence after you, paying close attention to their pronunciation.
  • If you notice anything off about their pronunciation, give them gentle feedback .
  • Once you’ve worked through the entire piece, have the students read it back to you paragraph by paragraph. Again, take the opportunity to correct where necessary.

Similar to the short answer activity discussed earlier, paragraph summary activities can challenge your students and help them develop their unique English voices.

This activity could be done post-reading, but it’s also an excellent way to ensure comprehension as you work through the text with your students.

  • Put students in groups.
  • Give them the text as you usually would.
  • Encourage your students to take notes, annotate and underline as they go. Ask them to talk about any personal connections that they have to the topic(s), or to put themselves in the shoes of someone featured in the text. Students will benefit from relating what they’ve learned to their own lives.
  • At the end of a paragraph (or suitable portion of the text), have the students summarize what they’ve read in their own words. They should be instructed to write it out in no more than four or five sentences. Encourage them to use different words and sentence constructions.
  • Have them present their summaries to the class. The presentations can last from 30 seconds to a minute each.
  • Answer any questions that arise.

A fun post-reading activity is to have a quiz based on the reading comprehension text.

Students generally get lots of opportunities to answer questions in class, but not as many to ask them. Try checking their comprehension by having them ask their classmates questions about the passage they’ve read.

I’ll go into the specific quiz formats later, but the activity will generally go like this:

  • Have them create a quiz for the other groups.
  • Have the groups grade the quizzes.
  • Discuss the quiz questions and answers as a class.

The quizzes don’t have to be in the usual pen-and-paper format. They can also come in the form of an:

  • Oral quiz.  This gives the students an opportunity to use their new vocabulary in speech.
  • Game show quiz. Set up a game resembling “Jeopardy!,” or choose from any other famous TV game show to model your quiz on.

True or false is yet another standard classroom activity that can be made fun for your ESL classroom.

  • Take your featured text, and create a good number of “yes or no” questions about it. Each question should be relatively simple, covering the main topic, events, themes, characters and anything else described in the text.
  • Read the questions out loud while students follow along on a worksheet. Have the students respond to the statements by giving a thumbs-up for a true statement or a thumbs-down for a false statement. This allows you to easily spot the students who are struggling to understand the piece and support them accordingly.

For longer and more complex pieces, you can review the true or false statements at the end of each paragraph or page, instead of the end like you would with simpler pieces.

This could be done as a pre- or post-reading activity and works best in groups.

  • Photocopy the passage, and cut it into pieces. Chunks of one or two paragraphs are best.
  • Get your students to put the reading together. 

You could also do a cloze reading exercise like so:

  • From the reading, choose topic sentences that you want your students to work on.
  • Using your word processor software (like Microsoft Word or Google Docs ), type or copy-and-paste the topic sentences into a blank page.
  • From the sentences, cut the words you want your students to work on, and paste them at the bottom of the page. Replace the cut words in the sentences with blanks.
  • Let your students fill out the blanks using the words pasted at the bottom of the page.

Luckily, here are some ready-to-use cloze activities on different topics you can swipe from. 

Taboo is arguably the best game for practicing vocabulary and livening up your lesson. If you haven’t heard of it before, it essentially involves a student explaining what the key word they’re thinking of means without using the key word itself or synonyms of any kind.

Here’s another variation:

  • Put students in groups of four to five members.
  • One student goes first. They draw their key word on the board. If the word is “financial,” the student won’t be able to say “bank,” “money” or “financial.” They can only make gestures or add details to their drawing.
  • The student who guesses which word fits the drawing gets a point.

Class discussions can take place before or after your ESL reading activities.

If you’re doing it beforehand, your goal should be to engage the students and activate their current vocabulary, getting them to talk in broad terms about the topic they’ll be reading.

For example, if the text will be about tourism, kickstart a discussion with questions like:

  • What are the benefits of a strong tourism industry?
  • What are the best tourist destinations in their home country, and why?
  • What are major problems for tourism for their home country?

You can put these questions on a worksheet with ample space for brainstorming and forming opinions independently.

Alternatively, you could divide students into pairs or small groups to discuss the topic before reading the text. Since you’re already familiar with the text they’ll be looking at, you can skillfully and subtly steer the conversation into issues and areas related to the gist of the text to come.

If you’re doing post-reading discussions, you can use questions from ESL textbooks , come up with your own questions or—if your students are at a high enough level—have them come up with the questions themselves.

  • Have them write two to three discussion questions.
  • Use the questions as a basis for class discussion.

For some fantastic ESL-oriented discussion questions on a variety of topics, click right here .

If the passage is about something topical, you could use it to organize a debate.

There are many ways to structure a class debate, but the one I usually use is pretty simple:

  • One-minute argument
  • One-minute rebuttal
  • The facilitator (usually you or a capable student) gives feedback.

Suitable for intermediate to advanced students, a debate offers a platform to share opinions about a given topic. Often, with a little imagination, a reading comprehension topic can segue into a debate topic relevant to the students’ own lives.

You know how watching a TED Talk often leaves you with a feeling that you’ve learned something new or even life-changing afterward? Recreate that format in class to further boost reading comprehension.

For example, if the class just read an article about the qualities of a good brand, the students could deliver two-minute presentations about their favorite brand and what makes it special.

To make the most of these in-class TED Talks:

  • Show them a relevant TED Talk in class, so they can get the hang of the format.
  • Give students time to create their own TED Talks. You could also assign it as a homework assignment instead.
  • Decide whether the TED Talk should be done individually or in groups. Both work well enough, in my experience.

Then again, your students might feel intimidated at the thought of having to recreate presentations that are given by big-name personalities and watched by millions of people around the world.

In that case, it’s okay to take a more down-to-earth approach to presentations. Give your students a bit more leeway with the format. Better yet, let them have the freedom to talk about any topic they choose.

This way, they’ll make more of an effort to communicate their passion for something in English. They’ll also have a solid incentive to brush up on the necessary vocabulary and express themselves in colorful ways. Watch them come alive as they talk about the things that matter the most to them.

  • Reading doesn’t only teach ESL students grammar, word usage and sentence structure. It also enables them to acquire new information about the culture surrounding their target language.
  • Reading helps students see how English is communicated through writing. As you know, good writing and being a good reader go hand in hand.
  • Reading comprehension activities help students test their understanding of words in a written context. At the same time, they can get the most out of their reading assignments.

While you’ve undoubtedly used conventional tests to quiz your students, there are ways to make reading comprehension activities effective without relying on the same old methods.

For example, you can:

  • Have your students listen to ESL podcasts . Some of them have transcripts, so students could read those first, then listen to the episode afterward and combine listening and reading comprehension.
  • Use videos with subtitles in your classroom for a fun twist on reading comprehension. The key is to use videos that have subtitles, like YouTube and FluentU , the latter of which has authentic videos with accurate transcripts. Have students read the transcript first, then play the video in class.

Sure, there’s a time for your students to read for pleasure outside the classroom. However, in-class reading comprehension activities maximize the benefits of reading by making it more relevant and personal to them.

Also, as their teacher, you’ll have opportunities to clarify misunderstandings and ambiguities, as well as enhance students’ vocabulary, word usage and interpretation skills.

With a few dashes of entertainment and creativity here and there, your ESL students will come to love reading in English beyond its educational benefits. 

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Reading Worksheets, Spelling, Grammar, Comprehension, Lesson Plans

7th Grade Reading Comprehension Worksheets

The middle school reading comprehension passages below include 7th grade appropriate reading passages and related questions. Please use any of the printable worksheets (you may duplicate them) in your classroom or at home. Just click on the worksheet title to view details about the PDF and print or download to your computer.

Be sure to check out all of our reading comprehension worksheets .

Anne of Avonlea

Anne of Avonlea

Your student will practice citing supporting evidence with a passage from “Anne of Avonlea.”

Biography of Abraham Lincoln

Biography of Abraham Lincoln

Your student can read about the life of Abraham Lincoln and write a short summary in this worksheet.

Coyote: the Survivor of North America

Coyote: the Survivor of North America

Your student will read a short informational passage about the coyote and then practice finding supporting evidence.

Earthquakes

Earthquakes

Your student will determine the contextual meaning of words in this informative passage about earthquakes.

Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon

Your student will learn about the Grand Canyon and determine the meanings of words in the passage.

Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist

Your student will summarize a passage from Charles Dicken’s classic novel, “Oliver Twist” in this worksheet.

The Attack on Pearl Harbor

The Attack on Pearl Harbor

In this worksheet, your student will be asked to analyze the influence of the attack on Pearl Harbor on Americans.

The Jabberwocky

The Jabberwocky

In this worksheet, your student will analyze the fun nonsense words in Lewis Carroll’s “The Jabberwocky” and determine whether the word is a noun, adjective or verb.

The Prince and the Pauper

The Prince and the Pauper

In this worksheet on Mark Twain’s “The Prince and the Pauper,” your student will compare the settings of Tom Canty’s real life and dream life.

The Road Not Taken

The Road Not Taken

Your student will explore the figurative language in Robert Frost’s beautiful poem, “The Road Not Taken.”

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10 Great Reading Comprehension Games

By Med Kharbach, PhD | Last Update: February 17, 2024

One of the most effective ways to enhance students’ understanding and enjoyment of reading is through interactive and engaging reading comprehension games. These games not only make learning more enjoyable but also reinforce crucial reading skills in a dynamic and memorable way.

From rolling dice to solve narrative puzzles to creating visual storyboards that bring text to life, reading comprehension games offer a plethora of benefits. They build vocabulary, enhance understanding of narrative structures, encourage critical thinking, and foster a love for reading.

In this post, we’ll delve into a variety of games that can transform reading from a solitary task into a lively and interactive classroom adventure. Whether you’re a teacher looking to spice up your reading curriculum or a parent seeking ways to support your child’s literacy at home, these games are designed to boost comprehension skills in an entertaining and educational manner.

Related: Best Reading Games for 4th Grade

Reading Comprehension Games

Here are some of the best reading comprehension games to use with your students and kids to enhance their reading experience and enable them to explore various aspects of reading in a fun and engaging way.

1. Story Cubes

Reading Comprehension Games

Story Cubes are great tools for bolstering reading comprehension through the art of storytelling. Imagine the excitement in students’ eyes as they roll the dice, each face adorned with unique images, prompting them to weave a tapestry of narratives. This game is especially useful for enhancing students’ narrative skills, creativity, and ability to sequence events.

As students play the game, they get to practice and develop their critical thinking and detail orientation skills. They also learn to appreciate the nuances of narrative structures, understanding the importance of character development, setting, and plot, which are crucial for reading comprehension.

Incorporating Story Cubes into your teaching toolkit allows you to address various aspects of comprehension in a manner that feels more like play than work. You could challenge students to connect their stories to themes or characters from texts they are reading, thereby deepening their engagement with the material. It’s a brilliant way to encourage them to think outside the box and see the connections between abstract images and concrete story elements.

2. “Wh” Bingo

Reading Comprehension Games

“Wh” Bingo transforms the traditional game of bingo into a dynamic reading comprehension exercise. By focusing on the critical “wh” questions – who, what, when, where, why, and how – this game compels students to delve into texts with a detective’s eye probing into context, the characters’ motivations, and the implications of their actions. This game encourages students to engage with texts on a deeper level, promoting a thorough understanding and recall of details.

This game can be easily adapted to any text, making it a versatile tool for educators. Whether it’s a complex literary piece or a straightforward article, “Wh” Bingo encourages students to grasp the finer points of texts, fostering a habit of attentive reading and critical thinking. It can also be used as an excellent review activity before assessments, ensuring that students have internalized key information from their readings.

3. Jeopardy! Reading Edition

Reading Comprehension Games

The Jeopardy! Reading Edition is an innovative way to transform a classroom into a game show, where knowledge of the text is the key to success. By categorizing questions into characters, settings, quotes, plot points, and themes, this game does more than test recall abilities; it encourages comprehensive understanding and analytical thinking. Students must not only remember details from the text but also articulate their thoughts and connections clearly, a skill paramount to reading comprehension.

This game format allows for a high level of customization, enabling teachers to tailor questions to the specific texts being studied. It’s an excellent way to review before tests, engage students in a competitive yet educational activity, and foster a love for reading. The excitement of competing in a Jeopardy game motivates students to delve deeper into their readings, seeking to understand not just the superficial elements but the intricate details and overarching themes.

Comic Strip Sequencing

Reading Comprehension Games

Comic Strip Sequencing offers a creative way for students to express their understanding of narrative order through visual means. After reading a story, students create comic strips that outline the sequence of events. This activity helps in comprehension and allows students to identify areas of confusion or misunderstanding. The visual aspect of this game makes it especially appealing to visual learners and can serve as a potent tool for reinforcing narrative structures and sequences. It’s a fantastic way for students to engage with the material on a different level, translating textual information into visual storytelling.

Mystery Box

Reading Comprehension Games

The Mystery Box game is a tactile and intriguing way to promote close reading and attention to detail. By filling a box with objects related to the story or text, students are challenged to pick an item and explain its significance within the narrative. This game encourages students to make connections between the physical world and the stories they read, deepening their engagement and understanding. It’s a hands-on approach to reading comprehension that highlights the importance of detail and fosters a more immersive reading experience.

Character Role Play

Reading Comprehension Games

Character Role Play is an immersive game that allows students to step into the shoes of characters from their reading materials. By acting out key scenes or improvising scenarios, students gain a deeper insight into character motivations, relationships, and development. This method of exploring reading materials not only enhances comprehension but also fosters empathy and a deeper connection to the characters and the story. It’s a dynamic way to bring texts to life, making the act of reading a multi-dimensional experience.

Vocabulary Matching

Reading Comprehension Games

Vocabulary Matching is a quintessential reading comprehension game that does more than just expand a student’s vocabulary; it embeds these words into their language repertoire in a meaningful way. By matching vocabulary words from their reading materials with definitions, sentences, or pictures, students actively engage with new terms, reinforcing their understanding and ability to use them in context. This game is especially beneficial for solidifying complex vocabulary, making it an indispensable tool for enhancing comprehension and facilitating language acquisition. It’s a straightforward yet effective method to enrich students’ linguistic foundation, crucial for their academic and personal growth.

Story Board Game

Reading Comprehension Games

The Story Board Game transforms the journey through a book or story into an adventurous path that students can physically navigate on a game board. This reading comprehension game makes understanding a text an interactive experience, with each move on the board presenting challenges or questions related to the plot, characters, or themes. Tailoring this game to different reading levels allows for inclusive play, ensuring that every student can engage with the material in a way that’s both fun and educational. It’s an ingenious approach to make reading an active pursuit, encouraging students to think critically about the text as they advance through the game.

Inference Riddles

reading comprehension task

Inference Riddles offer a unique twist on reading comprehension games by challenging students to solve puzzles that require a deeper level of thinking. This game tasks students with reading short passages and then solving riddles that demand an understanding of what’s implied, rather than explicitly stated. It’s a fantastic way to teach students to look for contextual clues and read between the lines, enhancing their inferential reasoning skills. Inference Riddles not only make comprehension exercises more engaging but also foster critical thinking and analytical skills that are vital for students’ academic success.

Book Trailer Project

reading comprehension task

The Book Trailer Project is a creative and modern approach to reading comprehension, where students create a “trailer” for a book they’ve read. This project goes beyond traditional reading exercises, asking students to dive into the text’s key themes, characters, and plot points and present their understanding in a multimedia format. It’s a dynamic way to encourage students to analyze and synthesize information from the text, promoting a deeper engagement with the material. By allowing for creative expression, the Book Trailer Project not only enhances comprehension but also caters to the diverse talents and interests of students, making it a valuable addition to any reading program.

Related: Best Reading Websites for Kids

Final thoughts

The reading comprehension games I shared with you above do more than just improve comprehension skills. They also ignite a passion for reading, foster creativity , and encourage critical thinking. Incorporating these games into your reading curriculum, will enable you to provide students with a dynamic and interactive learning experience that makes reading both a challenge and a joy.

In compiling this list of games, I tried to make it as diverse as possible thus catering to various learning styles. The purpose is to provide practical ideas and tips that you can apply in your teaching. These reading comprehension games are meant to cultivate lifelong learners who view reading as a window to the world’s endless wonders.

reading comprehension task

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Meet Med Kharbach, PhD

Dr. Med Kharbach is an influential voice in the global educational technology landscape, with an extensive background in educational studies and a decade-long experience as a K-12 teacher. Holding a Ph.D. from Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Canada, he brings a unique perspective to the educational world by integrating his profound academic knowledge with his hands-on teaching experience. Dr. Kharbach's academic pursuits encompass curriculum studies, discourse analysis, language learning/teaching, language and identity, emerging literacies, educational technology, and research methodologies. His work has been presented at numerous national and international conferences and published in various esteemed academic journals.

reading comprehension task

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B1 reading

Are you a learner at B1 English level (intermediate) ? This section offers reading practice to help you understand texts with everyday or job-related language. Texts include articles, travel guides, emails, adverts and reviews.

Each lesson has a preparation task, a reading text and two tasks to check your understanding and to practise a variety of reading skills. Make a start today.

Choose a reading lesson

A conference programme

A conference programme

Read the programme for a management conference to practise and improve your reading skills.

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A flyer for a gym

A flyer for a gym

Read a flyer promoting a new gym to practise and improve your reading skills.

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A travel guide

A travel guide

Read a travel guide about Bangkok to practise and improve your reading skills.

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An email request for help

An email request for help

Read an email asking for help from another department to practise and improve your reading skills.

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Digital habits across generations

Digital habits across generations

Read an article about how people at different ages use computers and smartphones to practise and improve your reading skills.

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Encyclopedia entry

Encyclopedia entry

Read an encyclopedia entry on the Taj Mahal to practise and improve your reading skills.

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How to spot fake news

How to spot fake news

Read some tips for spotting fake news to practise and improve your reading skills.

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Innovation in business

Innovation in business

Read a blog post about being innovative in business to practise and improve your reading skills.

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Planning an event

Planning an event

Read a dialogue where three people negotiate who does what to achieve a task.

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Robot teachers

Robot teachers

Read an article about robot teachers to practise and improve your reading skills.

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Social media influencers

Social media influencers

Read a blogpost about the impact of social media influencers in the business world to practise and improve your reading skills. 

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The legend of fairies

The legend of fairies

Read a text about the legend of fairies to practise and improve your reading skills.

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The Martian: a book review

The Martian: a book review

Read a review of the book 'The Martian' to practise and improve your reading skills.

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Learn to read English with confidence

Our online English classes feature lots of useful learning materials and activities to help you develop your reading skills with confidence in a safe and inclusive learning environment.

Practise reading with your classmates in live group classes, get reading support from a personal tutor in one-to-one lessons or practise reading by yourself at your own speed with a self-study course.

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Free ESL Reading Comprehension Worksheets for Your Lessons

Do you need English reading comprehension worksheets to supplement your ESL classroom?

Check out some of the worksheets and editable documents on this page.

Reading comprehension worksheets for ESL lessons

Why Reading Comprehension Is Important

Printable esl reading comprehension worksheets, how to teach reading comprehension (5 tips).

Reading comprehension, or the ability to understand the things you read, is a vital component of any ESL curriculum.

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Students learning a second language may be able to easily and accurately pronounce the text they see on a page without actually understanding what it says, so it’s important to test them to make sure they’re actually comprehending the things they’re reading.

It’s also important to give your students strategies for reading to help them more easily understand stories and other texts.

You can download and print all of the following worksheets for free. Use them in your lessons or assign them as homework to your students.

Worksheets for Beginner/Elementary (A1-A2)

Worksheets for intermediate/intermediate-advanced (b1-b2), worksheets for advanced (c1-c2), incorporate reading comprehension exercises in your esl classes.

You can teach reading comprehension in your ESL class by giving students exercises to complete directly after they read a passage. This forces them to pay attention to the content of what they’re reading because they know questions are coming.

You can also practice active reading with your students, showing them how to pay attention to sentence structures and keywords. This helps them recognize what to look for when they’re reading and figure out what’s happening in a passage without understanding every single word.

Hand out Worksheets as Homework

Because reading is a solitary activity, reading comprehension worksheets are a great homework assignment for students. Your ESL students can read and answer questions at their own pace at home, strengthening their reading comprehension skills and deepening their love of learning in the process.

Check Pronunciation

If you are using these worksheets in a one-to-one lesson then use it as an opportunity to test your student’s pronunciation. The first time they read the passage, have them read it out loud.

Make a note of any words where the pronunciation needs improving and then correct them afterwards. Once the first pass is done, they can read it in their head if it helps aid their comprehension.

Pick the Right Level

Don’t forget to choose a suitable worksheet for your student’s level. It should go without saying but it can be easy to forget this sometimes.

Don’t be afraid to step back a level if your student is really having a rough time. At the same time, if they are going through these like a knife through butter then it’s time to turn up the difficulty level!

Help Them Out

Try to get your students to work things out from context as much as possible. This will help build their language ability.

However, if they are really not getting a particular section, don’t be afraid to step in and help them out. Sometimes, understanding just one important keyword in a sentence is enough to unlock the context of an entire paragraph.

Browse our full archive of printable ESL worksheets.

9 thoughts on “Free ESL Reading Comprehension Worksheets for Your Lessons”

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Thank you so much.

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Marcel Jimmy

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EnglishMatic

Free Online English Tests & Exercises for Exams

EnglishMatic » Free English Reading Comprehension Tests & Exercises Online

Free English Reading Comprehension Tests & Exercises Online

Welcome to EnglishMatic’s online reading comprehension tests and exercises . Here, you can take free reading tests and exercises for beginners, intermediate and advanced learners . Our online reading tests consist of a short English reading passage with multiple-choice questions and answers. You can also read the tips to advance your reading comprehension. Start Now!

Free Online Reading Tests & Exercises for Beginners

  • Beginner Reading Comprehension Test 1 (Simple Present Reading Passage)
  • Beginner Reading Comprehension Exercise 2 (Present Progressive Reading Passage)
  • Elementary Reading Exercise & Test -3 (Simple Past Reading Passage)
  • A1-A2 Reading Comprehension Passage & Test 4 (Present Simple Passage) **(New)**
  • Elementary English Reading Passage & Test 5 **(New)**

Free Intermediate English Reading Tests & Texts

reading comprehension task

  • Intermediate Reading Comprehension Exercise 1
  • Free Intermediate Reading Comprehension Test 2
  • Free Intermediate Reading Comprehension Passage 3
  • B1-B2 Level English Reading Comprehension Passage & Test 4 **(New)**
  • Free B1 English Reading Comprehension Exercise & Test 5 **(New)**
  • B1-B2 Reading Paragraph with Questions & Test 6 **(New)**
  • ESL B1-B2 English Reading Text – Exercise 7 **(New)**

Advanced Reading Comprehension Passages – Tests

reading comprehension task

  • Advanced Reading Comprehension Test 1
  • Advanced Reading Comprehension Exercise 2
  • Free Advanced C1 Reading Passage & Test 3 **(New)**
  • Advance C1 English Online Reading Test – 4 **(New)**
  • B2-C1 Level Reading Text & Advanced Test 5 **(New)**
  • C1 Advanced Reading Comprehension Activity- Reading Test 6 *(New)*

How To Improve Your Reading Comprehension in 7 steps?

This article will examine the steps of how to improve your English reading skills . Reading may seem easy, but actually it is not. People face troubles while reading an English text or passage and cannot figure out quickly what the author wants to convey. Reading skill is defined as a talent of reading something along with comprehension. If you can read but cannot fully understand the message by and between the lines, it is evident that your reading ability is poor and you will have to enrich it. Here, you will also be able to grasp how to develop skills and comprehension while analyzing short reading comprehension passages with questions .

 Let’s find out the essential ways to enhance reading skills.

Get Familiar to the Reading Text & Passage

The kind of reading text matters a lot to sharpen your reading skills. There are two types of writing; factual and Literature. Factual reading texts focus on giving information and are generally based on textbooks, newspapers, etc. Literature talks about poetry, novel, stories, etc. EnglishMatic.com provides you with online reading passages, exercises, quizzes and tests with questions . Here, you can take advantage of studying online factual and literature reading texts with questions .

Skim & Scan the Passage

Skimming and scanning are effective techniques used in analyzing a short reading passage . Skimming is a quick check for general understanding of the content while scanning is a detailed interrogation of specific information in the reading text in English . Take a glance at the structure of what you are going to read. Pay special attention to the following options while studying reading passages with questions :

  • Strong words
  • Negative expressions
  • Paraphrasing with synonyms
  • Adverbs of frequency, contrast and time.
  • Graphs and Illustrations

Read The Passage Loudly

This technique helps a lot to develop your reading skills . When you read aloud, your eyes, ears, and brain work collectively. It compels you to focus on the reading passage in English . It also assists you in finding the details. However, you should turn to silent reading soon.

Read Daily through Critical Thinking

How to improve English reading skills ? We ask the same question again and again, but we don’t strive to take a step. So, read daily for at least 30 minutes and try to ask yourself questions as regards what you have read. Try to criticize the author’s intention, style and words. Analyze the reading passage with questions . This will boost your reading comprehension and familiarity with understanding a short reading text with questions and answers .

Find New Words & Structures

When you are reading a passage , find some new words and grammar structures that you find hard to understand. If you have failed to clarify meaning upon them, write the words and structures in your notebook. Find their meanings and usage in a dictionary or grammar book. You can find synonyms as well which contributes to your vocabulary, and it is the most significant benefit of reading. The better your knowledge of vocabulary and grammar is, the faster and easier you will grasp the message of the reading passage with questions . Englishmatic offers free English reading comprehension tests and exercises for you to practice.

Try To Grasp Meaning From Context

All the tips explained on this page are to enhance and improve your comprehension as it is fundamental in reading. Try to obtain the message of the author through specific words or phrases. You can best test your comprehension through beginner, intermediate, advanced online reading passages, tests and exercises which you can find on the internet. Be confident, read daily, and take english reading comprehension tests and exercises with answers .

Check Your Comprehension Progress

Another important step in improving your reading comprehension skills is to check your progress through online reading passages and tests with answers . Study free online English reading comprehension tests and exercises for advanced learners if you plan to take a language proficiency exam or the TOEFL, IELTS and FCE. Happily, EnglishMatic.com provides you with free English online reading passages, exercises, quizzes and tests with answers .

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Englishmatic.com ofrece pruebas gratuitas de comprensión de lectura en inglés para principiantes, intermedios y avanzados, pasajes de lectura en inglés con preguntas, cuestionarios de lectura en inglés y ejercicios de lectura en línea para estudiantes principiantes, intermedios y avanzados. Englishmatic.com offre test gratuiti di comprensione della lettura dell’inglese per principianti, intermedi e avanzati, passaggi di lettura dell’inglese con domande, quiz di lettura dell’inglese ed esercizi di lettura online per studenti principianti, intermedi e avanzati. Englishmatic.com propose des tests gratuits de compréhension de la lecture en anglais pour débutants, intermédiaires et avancés, des passages de lecture en anglais avec des questions, des quiz de lecture en anglais et des exercices de lecture en ligne pour les apprenants débutants, intermédiaires et avancés. Free unseen English reading comprehension tests & exercises online. English reading comprehension tests and exercises for beginners. English reading comprehension tests and exercises intermediate. English unseen reading comprehension tests and exercises advanced.

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Comprehension is an active process that involves the reader understanding and interpreting what is read.

The Simple View of Reading

The Simple View of Reading (Gough and Tunmer, 1986) suggests that reading comprehension is the product of two sets of skills: decoding and linguistic comprehension. Since Gough and Tunmer’s original paper, many researchers have provided evidence that "measures of decoding and linguistic comprehension each predict reading comprehension and its development, and together the two components account for almost all variance in this ability" (Castles, Rastle and Nation, 2018 p.27).

The Simple View of Reading was first proposed by Gough and Tunmer in 1986. Their research showed that skilful reading comprehension is a combination of two separate but equally important components - decoding skills and linguistic comprehension ability.

Early in my teaching career, I spent eight years living and teaching in Cambodia, a country in South-East Asia. While there, I learnt to speak the local language, called Khmer. For a long time, I could understand what I heard and I could speak to make myself understood in most everyday situations. I had good basic vocabulary and had learnt most of the grammatical structures that were used in spoken language. I could understand a basic text if it was read to me, but I couldn’t read a text because I hadn’t learnt the code. In this case, my linguistic comprehension was ok but my decoding was not meaning I could not achieve reading comprehension. Over time, I learnt to read the code. I could decode the unfamiliar squiggles and lines to read with some efficiency. I learnt to read phrases and sentences. When reading simple texts, I could decode the words and apply my simple vocabulary to comprehend the text.

In this case, my linguistic comprehension was sufficient and my decoding was sufficient meaning I could read simple texts with comprehension. However, I would have significant problems if I picked up the newspaper. Despite being able to decode or read the words, I struggled to read with comprehension. I often lacked background knowledge and could not comprehend the complex vocabulary and language structures used in the newspaper. No matter how efficient I was at decoding, I was not able to comprehend the text because my linguistic or language comprehension was not sufficient.

In order to read with comprehension, you must be able to read the words on the page or decode and understand what the words and language within the text mean. Research tells us that poor skills in either one creates a breakdown in reading comprehension.

Effective reading in the early years of school – Comprehension

Dr Deslea Konza (2011) explains that comprehension is “the ultimate goal of the reading” and that it is dependent on the development of the previous elements.

Comprehension. This is the ultimate goal of the reading process, obviously.

It does require all those other things to be in place and the two most important contributors to high level reading comprehension once the words can be lifted off the page.

So once they can be decoded the two most important contributors to comprehension, are vocabulary and background knowledge.

As we build children's vocabulary we increase their chances of making connections with other things which is what inferential comprehension is all about.

So, vocabulary remains such a powerful part of the reading process.

Scarborough’s reading rope

Scarborough’s reading rope further explains reading comprehension using a rope metaphor with strands of the rope representing the various interconnected components of skilled reading necessary for reading comprehension.

As teachers, we want to understand how we can teach students in such a way that their decoding skills and linguistic or language comprehension will be strong.

In 2001, Dr. Hollis Scarborough used a metaphor of a rope to represent the many strands that must be woven together over time to develop skilled reading. Dr Scarborough described the two essential components of skilled reading as language comprehension, which must become increasingly strategic over time, and word recognition, which should become increasingly automatic over time.

The lower part of the reading rope focuses on word recognition and includes three critical skills: Phonological awareness, decoding and sight recognition.

The upper part of the reading rope focuses on language comprehension and includes: background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning and literacy knowledge.

The lower strands: Word recognition

Reading comprehension is heavily dependent on a student’s word recognition skills because, to be able to understand written material, students need to be able to decode the words in the text. Scarborough’s rope explains that word recognition skills are made up of phonological awareness, decoding and sight recognition.

Let's explore the lower part of the reading rope and its three critical skills for successful word recognition. The first strand in the lower section of the rope is phonological awareness.

Phonological awareness refers to oral language - what you are hearing and saying. It is the understanding of the different ways speech, can be broken down into smaller units of sound and manipulated.

Learning to read requires an awareness of the sound structure of spoken language such as words, syllables, onset and rime and phonemes. For example the word rainbow can be segmented into two syllables rain – bow. Each syllable can be segmented into onset and rime r - ain, b – ow. The onset and rime can be segmented into 5 phonemes, the smallest units of sound /r/, /ai/, /n/. /b/, /ow/. An awareness of phonemes, or phonemic awareness, is particularly important for learning to read.

Development of this understanding requires explicit instruction, modelling, and lots of practice opportunities for segmenting words apart into their component phonemes and blending those phonemes back together to form words.

It is important that students understand the phonemic structure of spoken language first, as it is necessary to grasp the alphabetic principle or code that underlies our system of written language. In other words, the alphabetic principle is the insight that there is a direct connection between the sequence of phonemes in spoken words to the sequence of letters used to represent them in the written word.

The second strand in the lower section of the rope is decoding. Decoding requires knowledge of the alphabetic principle which is the relationship between the sounds of spoken language and the letters that represent them. Learning to read requires deliberate explicit and systematic instruction in the letter-sound correspondences of the English language - commonly referred to as phonics.

Readers must be able to recognise these correspondences to decode words. When using phonic knowledge to decode words the reader will: First look at the letters in the word, pronounce the individual phonemes in the word using their letter-sound knowledge, blend the isolated sounds together using their phonological blending skills, pronounce the word that has been activated from their vocabulary and phonological long term memory. Once a word is accurately decoded a few times, for most students, it is likely to become recognised without conscious deliberation, leading to efficient word recognition.

The third strand in the lower section of the rope is sight recognition. A sight word is any word that we recognise instantly, automatically and effortlessly, without sounding out or guessing. It is important to know that here we are not just referring to high frequency words. Research has shown us that sight recognition of words requires strong phonemic awareness and phonic knowledge as well as an understanding of the meaning of the word.

As the lower strand skills become stronger through repetition and practice, they become increasingly automatic and fluent. This is important because this frees up cognitive load that can then be applied to the upper part of the rope - language comprehension.

As readers encounter increasingly complex texts, they develop an understanding of how to navigate extended texts with unusual or complex features such as footnotes, endnotes, references, acknowledgements and often intricate visuals or diagrams that are essential to make meaning from the text.

Genre and text structure refers to the framework or patterns used within the text to organise or convey information and ideas. Knowledge of text structure is critical for skilled reading because this helps us know what to expect and pay attention to in a text.

Skilled readers are also constantly engaging with the purpose of a text and as the complexity of texts increases, the purpose may become more difficult to determine or deliberately disguised.

In the top strands of the rope, through modelling and experience, readers become increasingly strategic in extracting meaning from texts.

Readers will continue to develop their background knowledge, vocabulary, knowledge of language structures and verbal reasoning skills over a lifetime.

When readers are developing and applying increasingly strategic language comprehension skills alongside increasingly automatic word recognition skills, the complex task of reading comprehension is made possible.

The upper strands: Language comprehension

Comprehension also requires readers to strategically apply their language comprehension knowledge to make connections between what they read and what they already know. Scarborough’s reading rope explains that language comprehension includes background knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, language structures, verbal reasoning and literacy knowledge.

Let's explore the upper part of the reading rope and the critical elements of language comprehension.

Background knowledge refers to all the knowledge, facts, concepts and beliefs you bring with you when comprehending or learning from a situation or text. In relation to reading, we rely on background knowledge to attend to and make sense of what we are reading. The more familiar a reader is with the content of a text, the more easily they will process, chunk, understand and remember the information.

Imagine you were asked to read a text about a topic you have very little knowledge about-perhaps theoretical quantum physics. The reading task would likely feel very demanding. Now consider reading a text about a topic you know a lot about- this reading task would likely feel much easier and less cognitively taxing.

Teachers can support students to build background knowledge by providing exposure to rich and deep content that can be drawn upon and applied as background knowledge to problem solve and create meaning from texts.

Vocabulary refers to the knowledge of the meaning of words. It can be thought of in terms of width, the number of words known and depth, how well the word’s meaning is known and understood. We may have: no knowledge of a word, heard a word but not knowing what it means, a narrow and contextually based understanding. Or we may:have deeper knowledge but not able to readily recall and use it. Deep knowledge is when we have a rich decontextualised knowledge of a word’s meaning, its relationship to other words, and its extension to metaphorical uses.

The level of a person’s vocabulary knowledge is a strong predictor of reading comprehension. The more words we know and understand in a text, the greater opportunity we will have to understand, interpret and reflect on the intended meaning of a text. Beck, McKeown and Kucan suggested a framework for thinking about vocabulary. It is important to note that research has shown that it is essential that we explicitly teach tier 2 words- words that are not often in oral language but are characteristic of academic writing.

Language structures refers to the way our language is organised. It is about the relationships between the words, sentences, paragraphs and ideas in a spoken or written text. An understanding of language structures helps readers use the order and organisation of words, phrases and clauses within sentences to make sense of what they are reading.

Verbal reasoning refers to the ability to look deeper into what the words on the page are intending to say. In relation to reading, it involves being able to monitor understanding, problem-solve, and to make inferences based on connecting background knowledge with the vocabulary and language structures of the text.

Readers must infer meaning and understand how to interpret figurative language that is so often used within writing across all subject areas. For example, if we read a text that includes the sentence “The classroom was a zoo.” The reader must reason and process whether this statement is literal or figurative. They must ask what the author is saying and what they author is implying. The must connect this statement back to what the author has said previously and bring together their background knowledge about classrooms and zoos.

Developing a mental model to represent the situation described by a text is an important part of comprehension. A reader attends to the information within and across sentences to establish local coherence and to integrates their background knowledge with new information in the text as well as the inferred messages from the text.

Readers continue to adapt and refine the mental model they are creating as they read. Skilled readers monitor their comprehension to ensure that the mental model they are constructing makes sense. Where comprehension breaks down, skilled readers are able to recognise this breakdown and implement repair strategies.

Literacy knowledge refers to print concepts and the genre of texts written for specific purposes. Beginning readers learn print concepts such as reading from left to right and top to bottom, that texts and books are made up of different parts such as titles, headings, contents and index pages and that the print on the page represents words.

How can we teach comprehension?

In the context of effective reading instruction for the early years, it is important to understand that while students are learning the alphabetic code the majority of comprehension instruction should focus on oral language comprehension development through explicit teaching during modelled and shared reading experiences. An explicit focus on teaching students to strategically apply their background knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, knowledge about texts, understanding of language structures and reasoning skills to texts will support them to develop strong language comprehension abilities as they develop fluent word recognition skills.

We know that explicit teaching practices involve teachers clearly explaining to students why they are learning something, how it connects to what they already know, what they are expected to do, how to do it and what it looks like when they have succeeded. Explicit teaching provides students with opportunities and time to check their understanding, ask questions and receive clear, effective feedback.

The Gradual release of responsibility model is a helpful framework to understand what explicit instruction can look like when teaching reading.

At the heart of the model is the concept that, as we learn new content or skills, the responsibility for the cognitive load shifts from primarily sitting with the teacher as the model or expert, to the responsibility sitting with the student as they take on independence in their learning and application.

It is important to note that the model is not linear and can be used flexibly rather than from beginning to end over the course of a lesson or in the same way for every student. Instead, it should be seen as a dynamic model that is recursive, meaning it can be repeated and revisited as needed and informed by formative assessment. As the students increase in their ability, teachers gradually carry less of the cognitive load and students gradually assume more responsibility for the learning in order to become independent in the knowledge, skill or concept understanding and the application of this across contexts.

reading comprehension task

Modelled instruction

The Gradual release of responsibility model begins with the teacher assuming a significant proportion of the cognitive load for the learning. Modelled instruction is when the teacher models how an expert reads with a particular emphasis on the skill, concept or knowledge focus. This section is when the teacher is saying “I do, you watch”.

Although modelled instruction is characterised by teacher voice, the students are active participants and engaged in careful observation. As the teacher explains the learning intention and its purpose, the students should be encouraged to reflect on their current knowledge, understanding or skill. The teacher builds understanding of the academic language or background knowledge necessary to access the learning and the students reflect on and add to their background knowledge or academic vocabulary. Modelled instruction is often characterised by the teacher ‘thinking aloud’ to demonstrate how a skilled reader monitors and controls their comprehension. At the end of modelled instruction:

revisit the learning intention and reflect on what the students observed the teacher doing to show the learning intention

co-construct the success criteria based on what the teacher modelled and the students observed

co-construct an anchor chart that students can refer to as they continue their learning.

Shared practice

Shared practice offers rich instructional opportunities as teachers and students both engage with a shared text. This is when the teacher invites the students to share responsibility for the thinking, with the teacher saying “I do, you help.” Shared instruction is an interactive reading experience with the teacher or expert continuing to model or demonstrate the skills, concept or understanding that is the focus of the learning, however, the students are now invited to join the teacher in sharing the cognitive load for the learning. Shared practice is characterised by rich and authentic conversations amongst the community of readers as both teacher and students discuss, pose ideas, ask questions and extend their thinking.

Guided practice

The next stage is guided practice when the student takes on significantly more responsibility with the teacher saying “you do, I help.” Guided practice often involves the teacher working with a small group of students and encouraging the students to think aloud about the strategy focus. The teacher asks questions to prompt or clarify thinking, supporting and guiding the learning of the group. Guided practice is characterised by high challenge texts scaffolded with high support for the needs of the learner.

Collaborative practice

Collaborative practice is when the students take on and share more responsibility with their fellow learners. The teacher is still present and available but is saying “you do together, I will support you as needed.” Students are often paired with a partner or work in a small group. They work collaboratively on a strategy focus, sharing their thinking as they work together. Students are encouraged to think aloud as they read and to engage in shared discussion, questioning and collaboration. During collaborative practice, the teacher supports students by observing, monitoring, prompting and guiding them towards independence. The teacher encourages the use of support structures such as anchor charts, learning intentions and success criteria.

Independent practice

Once the student is confident with the learning, they continue to practice independently. The teacher is present and available and is now saying “you do alone and I will watch.” The students can record how they think aloud, problem solve and use the focus strategy to support their reading. The teacher uses this stage as an opportunity to observe and formatively assess students. Multiple opportunities across varying contexts need to be offered to students in order for them to develop independence with a skill or strategy

Classroom resources

Resources have been developed to support teachers implement evidence-based practices in the classroom. Resources to support explicit Comprehension instruction can be found on the Universal Resources Hub .

Resources include:

  • Inference - teaching strategies for Years 1 and 2 (PDF, 2.5MB ) I Inference - teaching strategies for Years 1 and 2 (DOCX, 13.2MB )
  • Audience and purpose teaching strategies for Years 1 and 2 (PDF, 1.7MB ) Audience and purpose teaching strategies for Years 1 and 2 (DOCX, 1.5MB )
  • Language features in imaginative texts teaching strategies for Years 1 and 2 (DOCX, 109KB ) | Language features in imaginative texts teaching strategies for Years 1 and 2 (PDF, 109KB )
  • Connecting ideas - teachings strategies for Years 1 and 2 (PDF, 303KB ) | Connecting ideas - teachings strategies for Years 1 and 2 (DOCX, 6.1MB )

Professional learning

Focus on Understanding texts: The components of reading – Blended learning

Professional learning opportunities in the practical application of evidence-based teaching of reading are available on the Literacy and numeracy professional learning web page.

Business Unit:

  • Teaching, Learning and Student Wellbeing

New York Tech

Best Reading Comprehension Strategies for Middle School Students

Does your child often struggle with reading comprehension in school?

This can affect their grades, as well as their self-esteem. If your child is finding it hard to absorb the contents of their texts in class, they may need a few extra reading tactics.

These can help them digest materials and enjoy reading more. When they enjoy reading more, they’ll naturally improve their reading comprehension.

To find out which reading comprehension strategies for middle school can help your child, keep reading.

Active Reading

Active reading means becoming an engaged participant in the reading process rather than a passive observer. Encourage middle school readers to interact with the text actively.

Encourage them to underline key points, highlight important sentences, and jot down notes or questions in the margins. This process helps students not only keep information but also better comprehend the material.

When students actively engage with a text, it’s as if they’re having a conversation with the author. This interaction leads to a deeper understanding of the content. This fosters a more thoughtful and critical approach to reading.

Previewing the Text

Before delving into a text, students should preview it by examining the title, subheadings, and any bold or italicized words. This initial scan gives them an idea of what the text is all about. It’s like getting a sneak peek before watching a movie – it helps them prepare mentally and activate their prior knowledge.

As your middle school student previews the text, encourage them to think about what they already know related to the topic. This helps them make connections and gives them a head start in understanding the new material. Think of it as setting the stage for the main performance, making the reading experience smoother and more enjoyable.

Asking Questions

Asking questions while reading is a powerful strategy for enhancing comprehension. Teach them to inquire about the who, what, when, where, why, and how aspects of the text. These questions help guide their thinking and promote critical examination of the material.

When your child asks questions while reading, they’re actively seeking answers and engaging with the text. These queries can be as simple as “Who is the main character?” or “Why did the author say that?” By doing so, they’re actively exploring the content, leading to a deeper understanding.

Vocabulary Building

A strong vocabulary is essential for comprehension. Encourage students to keep a vocabulary journal where they record unfamiliar words and their meanings. This not only enhances their understanding of the current text but also builds a valuable skill for future reading.

Think of vocabulary as the building blocks of comprehension. When your middle schooler encounters a new word, it’s like discovering a new tool in their toolbox. This tool helps them unlock the meaning of the text and expands their ability to understand and communicate effectively.

Summarizing

After reading a section or a chapter, encourage students to summarize what they’ve read in their own words. This forces them to process the information and identify the main ideas and supporting details.

Summarizing helps your middle schooler distill the essential points from the text. It’s like making a condensed version of a long movie into a trailer.

This skill is particularly valuable when studying. It allows students to review the material more efficiently and understand it more thoroughly.

Visualizing

Visualization is a powerful tool for comprehension. Encourage students to create mental images of the scenes or concepts described in the reading. This can make the material more relatable and memorable.

When your middle school student visualizes what they’re reading, it’s like creating a movie in their mind. These mental images bring the text to life and help them connect with the content on a deeper level.

For instance, if they’re reading about a character in a story, they can imagine what that character looks like, where they live, and what they do. This visualization aids in understanding and retention.

Making Connections

Help students make connections between the text and their own experiences, other texts they’ve read, or current events. This enhances comprehension by providing reading context and relevance to the material.

Encourage your middle schooler to think about how the content relates to their own life. This could be as simple as connecting a character’s feelings to their own experiences. Making these connections brings the reading to life and makes it more meaningful.

Encourage students to predict what will happen next in a story or what the author’s main argument will be in an informational text. This keeps them engaged and encourages them to anticipate the direction of the text.

Predicting is like trying to guess the plot of a movie based on the first few scenes. When they do, they become active participants in the narrative. It’s not just about reading words; it’s about making educated guesses and being engaged in the storyline or the author’s argument.

Inferencing

Inferencing is the art of drawing conclusions based on evidence in the text. Middle school students should be taught to identify clues. They can use them to make educated guesses about character motivations, plot developments, or the author’s purpose.

When your child makes inferences while reading, they’re like detectives piecing together a puzzle. They gather clues from the text and use their reasoning skills to make sense of the information.

This not only improves comprehension but also sharpens critical thinking abilities. Reading tutoring can provide extra practice in making inferences, helping students become more adept at this skill. 

Critical Reading

Teach middle school students to read critically. This means analyzing the author’s tone, biases, and the credibility of the information presented. Critical reading promotes a deeper understanding of the text and encourages students to question what they read.

They’re not just accepting everything at face value. They’re evaluating the information and considering the source. This skill empowers them to be effective readers who can separate fact from opinion and identify potential biases.

Effective Reading Comprehension Strategies for Middle School Students

Reading comprehension strategies for middle school can help them excel. By using the strategies discussed, students can become more confident and independent readers.

So, let’s encourage our young learners to practice these strategies and watch them thrive in their reading abilities. Try incorporating these strategies in your classroom today! Please take a look at our blog for more educational articles.

Please take a look at our blog for more educational articles.

This article is published by NYTech in collaboration with Syndication Cloud.

Best Reading Comprehension Strategies for Middle School Students

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Join the community, add a new evaluation result row, reading comprehension.

549 papers with code • 7 benchmarks • 95 datasets

Most current question answering datasets frame the task as reading comprehension where the question is about a paragraph or document and the answer often is a span in the document.

Some specific tasks of reading comprehension include multi-modal machine reading comprehension and textual machine reading comprehension, among others. In the literature, machine reading comprehension can be divide into four categories: cloze style , multiple choice , span prediction , and free-form answer . Read more about each category here .

Benchmark datasets used for testing a model's reading comprehension abilities include MovieQA , ReCoRD , and RACE , among others.

The Machine Reading group at UCL also provides an overview of reading comprehension tasks .

Figure source: A Survey on Machine Reading Comprehension: Tasks, Evaluation Metrics and Benchmark Datasets

reading comprehension task

Benchmarks Add a Result

reading comprehension task

Most implemented papers

Roberta: a robustly optimized bert pretraining approach.

reading comprehension task

Language model pretraining has led to significant performance gains but careful comparison between different approaches is challenging.

Language Models are Few-Shot Learners

openai/gpt-3 • NeurIPS 2020

By contrast, humans can generally perform a new language task from only a few examples or from simple instructions - something which current NLP systems still largely struggle to do.

Listen, Attend and Spell

Unlike traditional DNN-HMM models, this model learns all the components of a speech recognizer jointly.

Bidirectional Attention Flow for Machine Comprehension

Machine comprehension (MC), answering a query about a given context paragraph, requires modeling complex interactions between the context and the query.

XLNet: Generalized Autoregressive Pretraining for Language Understanding

With the capability of modeling bidirectional contexts, denoising autoencoding based pretraining like BERT achieves better performance than pretraining approaches based on autoregressive language modeling.

Towards AI-Complete Question Answering: A Set of Prerequisite Toy Tasks

reading comprehension task

One long-term goal of machine learning research is to produce methods that are applicable to reasoning and natural language, in particular building an intelligent dialogue agent.

SQuAD: 100,000+ Questions for Machine Comprehension of Text

worksheets/0xd53d03a4 • EMNLP 2016

We present the Stanford Question Answering Dataset (SQuAD), a new reading comprehension dataset consisting of 100, 000+ questions posed by crowdworkers on a set of Wikipedia articles, where the answer to each question is a segment of text from the corresponding reading passage.

QANet: Combining Local Convolution with Global Self-Attention for Reading Comprehension

On the SQuAD dataset, our model is 3x to 13x faster in training and 4x to 9x faster in inference, while achieving equivalent accuracy to recurrent models.

Language Models are Unsupervised Multitask Learners

Natural language processing tasks, such as question answering, machine translation, reading comprehension, and summarization, are typically approached with supervised learning on taskspecific datasets.

MS MARCO: A Human Generated MAchine Reading COmprehension Dataset

AmenRa/rank_eval • 28 Nov 2016

The size of the dataset and the fact that the questions are derived from real user search queries distinguishes MS MARCO from other well-known publicly available datasets for machine reading comprehension and question-answering.

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  4. Reading Comprehension Grade 9 Worksheets

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  5. Exercise 1: Reading Comprehension. Test module 3 unit 3

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  6. Reading: Task Cards Grades 2-5

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COMMENTS

  1. Free Reading Comprehension Worksheets

    Print and use these worksheets to improve reading comprehension skills for grade 1 to grade 5. Choose from over 100 children's stories, compare and contrast, main idea, sequencing, story elements, conclusions and more topics.

  2. Free Reading Comprehension Worksheets

    READTHEORY Workbooks Visit our online store here! Our reading comprehension worksheets teach students to think critically, draw inferences, understand scope and global concepts, find or recall details, and infer the meaning of useful vocabulary words.

  3. Reading Comprehension Worksheets

    Find a variety of reading comprehension worksheets for students to practice different skills and topics. You can print, edit, or complete these online worksheets for nonfiction, short stories, inferences, main idea, theme, story structure, characterization, setting, summary, making predictions, and more.

  4. Reading Comprehension Worksheets

    Improve your student's reading skills with free, printable reading comprehension passage exercises. Choose from grade-appropriate passages and related questions for 1st to 10th grade students. Learn the meaning of the text and improve your reading comprehension skills.

  5. Reading Comprehension Worksheets

    Find reading comprehension worksheets for students in kindergarten through sixth grade, with simple and complex questions, vocabulary activities, and writing prompts. Choose from various topics such as animal articles, biographies, poems, and fiction stories.

  6. English Reading Comprehension Exercises

    Improve your English reading skills with a variety of texts and exercises on diverse topics. Choose from multiple choice, fill in the blanks, true/false and other question types to test your understanding and comprehension.

  7. How to Improve Reading Comprehension: 8 Expert Tips

    Learn how to read and understand texts on different levels, from the literal to the subtextual, with practice and focus. Find out why reading comprehension is important for school, work, and life, and get tips for improving your skills.

  8. 31 Effective Reading Comprehension Activities

    1. Roll & Chat Dice Who would've thought that die could be used to assess understanding? This activity relies on just two dies to accomplish just that! Once your students have finished their class reader, have them work in partners or small groups to roll dice and answer the corresponding questions provided.

  9. Seven Strategies to Teach Students Text Comprehension

    Be aware of what they do understand. Identify what they do not understand. Use appropriate strategies to resolve problems in comprehension. 2. Metacognition. Metacognition can be defined as "thinking about thinking.". Good readers use metacognitive strategies to think about and have control over their reading. Before reading, they might ...

  10. Getting started with Reading Comprehension

    A Reading Comprehension task is made up of these parts: 1-2 passages: Total length of the text will be about 50-60 lines. The topics are diverse, and many may be unfamiliar to you. Questions: You'll be asked several questions about the text. Some of the questions can be answered with information explicitly stated in the passage, but many ...

  11. Reading

    A1 reading Reading practice to help you understand simple information, words and sentences about known topics. Texts include posters, messages, forms and timetables. A2 reading Reading practice to help you understand simple texts and find specific information in everyday material.

  12. ReadTheory

    Improve students' reading comprehension with proven standards-aligned exercises for grades K-12. Easy. Get up and running in minutes with an easy-to-use interface and human support when you need it. Fun. Build classroom culture with interactive reading exercises and competitions that keep students engaged.

  13. Improve Reading Comprehension

    Tip #5: Use Task Cards for More than Just Independent Practice. Because the texts on task cards are short and skill-based, they are perfect for independent practice. But if you want to help students improve reading comprehension, you can use them for so many other parts of your reading block. Use them during small strategy groups.

  14. Reading comprehension exercises esl

    Reading comprehension exercises for all levels esl. Free interactive reading exercises. Fables, short stories, English talks, ebooks. English second language, English foreign language, ESL , EFL, ielts

  15. Reading comprehension at primary school

    Reading comprehension: Age 10-11 (Year 6 / Primary 7) There is much more to reading than seeing a word and saying it out loud. Much, much more! When we read a book, we might be doing any number of the following tasks: Understanding the meaning of new or tricky vocabulary. Understanding the key elements of a story such as character and setting ...

  16. 22 Effective ESL Reading Activities Your Students Will Love

    A little time spent going over their notes here can improve the overall accuracy and relevance of their answers. 13. Read and Repeat: Get Pronunciation Down Pat. Reading comprehension work gives you an excellent opportunity to get in some pronunciation activities for your ESL students.

  17. 7th Grade Reading Comprehension Worksheets

    7th Grade Reading Comprehension Worksheets. The middle school reading comprehension passages below include 7th grade appropriate reading passages and related questions. Please use any of the printable worksheets (you may duplicate them) in your classroom or at home. Just click on the worksheet title to view details about the PDF and print or ...

  18. A2 reading

    A2 reading. Are you a learner at A2 English level (pre-intermediate)? This section offers reading practice to help you understand simple texts and find specific information in everyday material. Texts include emails, invitations, personal messages, tips, notices and signs. Each lesson has a preparation task, a reading text and two tasks to ...

  19. 10 Great Reading Comprehension Games

    Inference Riddles offer a unique twist on reading comprehension games by challenging students to solve puzzles that require a deeper level of thinking. This game tasks students with reading short passages and then solving riddles that demand an understanding of what's implied, rather than explicitly stated.

  20. B1 reading

    This section offers reading practice to help you understand texts with everyday or job-related language. Texts include articles, travel guides, emails, adverts and reviews. Each lesson has a preparation task, a reading text and two tasks to check your understanding and to practise a variety of reading skills. Make a start today.

  21. Free ESL Reading Comprehension Worksheets for Your Lessons

    Hand out Worksheets as Homework. Because reading is a solitary activity, reading comprehension worksheets are a great homework assignment for students. Your ESL students can read and answer questions at their own pace at home, strengthening their reading comprehension skills and deepening their love of learning in the process.

  22. Free English Reading Comprehension Tests & Exercises Online

    Welcome to EnglishMatic's online reading comprehension tests and exercises.Here, you can take free reading tests and exercises for beginners, intermediate and advanced learners.Our online reading tests consist of a short English reading passage with multiple-choice questions and answers. You can also read the tips to advance your reading comprehension.

  23. Comprehension

    Comprehension is an active process that involves the reader understanding and interpreting what is read. The Simple View of Reading The Simple View of Reading (Gough and Tunmer, 1986) suggests that reading comprehension is the product of two sets of skills: decoding and linguistic comprehension.

  24. Best Reading Comprehension Strategies for Middle School Students

    If your child is finding it hard to absorb the contents of their texts in class, they may need a few extra reading tactics. These can help them digest materials and enjoy reading more. When they ...

  25. Reading Comprehension

    Some specific tasks of reading comprehension include multi-modal machine reading comprehension and textual machine reading comprehension, among others. In the literature, machine reading comprehension can be divide into four categories: cloze style, multiple choice, span prediction, and free-form answer. Read more about each category here.

  26. Tia Parnell on Instagram: "TASKS YOUR FRENCH WRITERS WILL LOVE

    24 likes, 6 comments - parfaitementparnell on February 15, 2024: "TASKS YOUR FRENCH WRITERS WILL LOVE ⠀⠀ Writing can be a daunting task for any studen..." Tia Parnell on Instagram: "TASKS YOUR FRENCH WRITERS WILL LOVE 🙌🏼⠀⠀ Writing can be a daunting task for any student, but it can be especially challenging for those learning a ...