Short Reading Comprehensions
Four passages, getting a little longer each time. Every passage and every question here was written for this site.
How to use these
Read the passage twice before looking at the questions. Once to find out what it says, and once to notice the details.
Answer in whole sentences. He was hungry teaches more than hungry, and it is the habit every later examination will expect.
Passage 1: The lost slipper
Nimal could find only one slipper. He looked under the bed. He looked behind the door. At last he found it in the garden. The puppy was sitting on it, and would not move.
- How many slippers could Nimal find at first?
- Name two places he looked.
- Where was the slipper in the end?
- Why do you think the puppy would not move?
Passage 2: The bus to town
The bus was full, so Amma and I stood near the door. A woman with a basket of mangoes was sitting near us. When an old man got on at the next stop, she stood up and gave him her seat. She held her basket on her arm for the rest of the journey, and she did not complain once.
- Why did Amma and the writer stand?
- What was in the woman's basket?
- What did the woman do when the old man got on?
- What kind of person do you think the woman is? Give one reason from the passage.
Passage 3: The kite
Sithara made her kite from two sticks, a sheet of blue paper and a long piece of string. Her brother said it would never fly. She took it to the paddy field in the evening, when the wind was strong, and ran with it until her arms ached.
The kite went up. It went higher than the coconut trees, and then higher than the temple roof. Her brother stopped laughing and asked whether she would make one for him.
- What three things did Sithara use to make her kite?
- What did her brother say at the beginning?
- Find two things in the passage that the kite flew higher than.
- How do you think Sithara felt at the end? Which words in the passage make you think so?
Passage 4: The power cut
The lights went out just as we sat down to eat. Thatha found the candles in the kitchen drawer, and Amma lit two of them and put them on the table. For a while nobody spoke, because everything looked strange and yellow.
Then my grandmother began to tell us about the village where she grew up, where there had been no electricity at all. She talked about carrying water, and about doing her homework by a small lamp. My sister and I listened without interrupting, which almost never happens.
When the lights came back on an hour later, we were disappointed.
- When exactly did the lights go out?
- Who found the candles, and who lit them?
- Why did nobody speak at first?
- Why were the children disappointed when the lights came back on? Answer in one full sentence.
- The writer says the children listened 'without interrupting, which almost never happens'. What does this tell you about them?
Helping without giving the answer
When a child is stuck, the temptation is to tell them. Four questions will nearly always get them there themselves.
Where in the passage would we look?
Not the answer, but the place. Most wrong answers come from answering out of memory instead of looking.
Read that sentence again, aloud.
Reading aloud slows a child down enough to notice what is actually written.
What does the question word want?
Why wants a reason. Where wants a place. How many wants a number. Half of all lost marks are answers to a different question.
Now say it as a whole sentence.
Once they have the answer in their head, make them say it properly before they write it.
The last question in each passage
In every passage above, the final question has no single right answer. It asks the child what they think, and for a reason from the text.
Those questions matter most. Finding a fact is a skill a child will have for a few years; supporting an opinion with evidence is one they will use for the rest of their life.
A passage that marks itself
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