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If your class 5 child can read every word aloud but goes blank when you ask what the passage was about, you are not alone. In the ASER 2024 national findings, a survey of rural India, 44.8% of Std V children in government schools and 59.3% in private schools could read a story at Std II level. Comprehension responds to a few specific habits, and you can practise them at home in short sessions.
How do I pick a passage at the right level for my class 5 child?
The Education Endowment Foundation's guidance on literacy for 7 to 11 year olds puts the trap simply: if a text is too easy, children do not need to use comprehension strategies; if it is too hard, they cannot understand it. You want the middle.
A two-minute home check:
Ask your child to read the first page aloud.
Notice how often they stop on a word or guess wildly. A few stumbles are fine; a stumble in almost every line means read it aloud together instead.
Ask, “What just happened?” If they can tell you in their own words, the level is right. If they retell it perfectly and look bored, go up a step.
Mix storybooks, children's magazines, books in your home language and a chapter from next term's EVS or science book. The same EEF guidance recommends exposing children to an increasingly wide range of texts with an appropriate level of challenge. Our guide to checking your child's reading level at home has a fuller test.
What should my child do while reading to understand more?
The EEF guidance lists five strategies that should be modelled and practised until they become fluent: prediction, questioning, clarifying, summarising and activating prior knowledge. For a class 5 child, start with the first two.
Prediction means guessing what will happen next from clues in the text; the EEF notes this makes children pay close attention and monitor their own understanding.
Questioning means your child, not you, asks questions to check they have understood.
A review of intervention studies by Barak Rosenshine, Carla Meister and Saul Chapman found that teaching students to generate their own questions produced a median effect size of 0.36 on standardised comprehension tests. An earlier review of 16 reciprocal teaching studies, where teacher and students practise predicting, questioning, clarifying and summarising through dialogue, found a median effect size of 0.32 on standardised tests.
These results come from structured teaching in schools: evidence that the habits can be taught, not a promise for any one child.
What does a practice session look like?
This example follows the before, during and after pattern in the EEF guidance. Say the passage is a half-page story called “The Kite on the Roof”, about a girl named Meena who finds a torn kite after Makar Sankranti.
Before reading (2 minutes). Show only the title. You: “What do you think this is about? What gave you that idea?” Your child: “Someone's kite gets stuck.” Write the guess on a sticky note.
During reading (8 minutes). Stop twice at natural breaks. You: “Was your guess right? What do you think happens next?” Then: “Ask me one question about this part, one I'd have to think about.” Nudge them towards why and how questions, such as “Why didn't Meena just throw the kite away?”
After reading (5 minutes). Ask for a two-sentence summary. Then look at the sticky note together: what changed their mind?
If a word stops them, ask for a guess from the clues first; our piece on building vocabulary at home has more ideas.
How often should we practise reading comprehension?
The EEF guidance notes that structured comprehension interventions of up to ten weeks tend to be more successful than longer ones, so we suggest a six-week cycle:
Three sessions a week, 15 minutes each, on fixed days.
Weeks 1 and 2: you model predicting and questioning aloud; your child copies.
Weeks 3 and 4: your child leads the predictions; you still prompt the questions.
Weeks 5 and 6: your child runs the whole routine while you listen.
Then pause, switch the type of text and start again.
At the end of the cycle, show your child the saved sticky notes and how many questions they now ask without prompting. Praise the question, not the score.
If the passage comes from a science chapter and the trouble is the idea rather than the words, the Fermi Concept Library has a lesson for each concept in physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and computing, to look at together before reading.
When should I ask the school for help?
If your child still struggles to read individual words after several weeks, the difficulty may be decoding rather than comprehension. The EEF guidance advises checking for decoding weaknesses before choosing targeted support. Talk to the class teacher, and if they suggest an assessment, follow their lead. Our guide on what to do when your child reads but does not understand covers the next steps.
Start this week: pick one passage, do the two-minute level check, and run your first 15-minute session.
