KS2 Reading Comprehension Tips — Strategies That Actually Work

The Reading Paper Is a Marathon

Sixty minutes. Three texts. Around 38 questions. Your child needs stamina and a strategy, not just good reading skills.

The texts get harder as they go. The first is usually the most straightforward — maybe a story extract or a poem. By the third, they might be reading a persuasive article or a classic literature excerpt. Kids who spend too long on text one end up rushing through the hardest section. That’s where marks get lost.

Read the Questions First

This one splits teachers right down the middle. Some say read the text first. Others say skim the questions before you start reading. Here’s the thing — for most children, reading the questions first works better.

Why? Because it gives their brain a job. Instead of reading passively, they’re hunting for answers. They know to look out for a character’s feelings, or a particular word, or the author’s opinion. It turns reading into an active task. Try it at home with a newspaper article and see if it clicks for your child.

The Five Question Types

Every question on the reading paper falls into one of these five categories. Once your child can recognise which type they’re looking at, they know exactly what the examiner wants.

• Retrieval — Find it in the text. The answer is right there in black and white.
• Inference — Read between the lines. What does the character’s behaviour suggest?
• Vocabulary — What does this word mean in this context? Not the dictionary definition — what it means here.
• Summarising — What are the main ideas? This usually means picking out key points from a paragraph or the whole text.
• Prediction — What might happen next? Use clues from the text to back up your guess.

Each type needs a different approach. A retrieval answer should quote the text directly. An inference answer needs evidence plus an explanation of what it shows.

Retrieval Questions — The Easiest Marks

The answer IS in the text. Your child just has to find it. These should be free marks every single time.

The trick is scanning. Find a key word from the question, scan the text for that word (or a synonym), and the answer is usually in the same sentence or the one next to it. Then quote directly — don’t paraphrase when you don’t need to.

Loads of Year 6 children lose marks on retrieval questions not because they can’t find the answer, but because they write too much. If it asks for one thing, give one thing. Short and precise beats long and waffy.

Time Management

A rough guide: about 15 minutes per text, plus 10 minutes at the end to check answers and go back to anything you skipped. That’s tight but doable.

The golden rule: if your child is stuck on a question for more than a minute, circle it and move on. Coming back with fresh eyes is almost always more productive than staring at the same sentence. And never, ever leave a question blank — even a reasonable guess can pick up a mark.

The 2-Mark Question Trick

Always check how many marks a question is worth. It’s printed right there on the paper. If a question is worth 2 marks, your child needs to give two things — usually a point AND evidence from the text, or two separate points.

A 3-mark question? Three points, or a detailed explanation with multiple pieces of evidence. The mark allocation is basically the examiner telling your child exactly how much to write. Teach them to use it.

Building Stamina at Home

Twenty minutes of reading a day. That’s it. But make it a mix — fiction one day, a newspaper article the next, a non-fiction book after that. SATs texts are deliberately varied, so your child needs to be comfortable with different styles.

After they read, ask them questions. Not quiz-style — just a chat. “What happened? Why do you think the character did that? How do you know?” That last question is gold. It trains them to find evidence automatically.

SATs Arcade has reading comprehension practice with real passage-style questions and instant feedback. It’s a great way to build those skills without it feeling like homework.