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4th grade reading comprehension
4th grade (Year 5 in England) · 16 questions · Common Core: RI.4.8, RI.6.6, RL.4.2, RL.5.2 · England: Y5/6 Reading, KS2 SATs Reading, Y5/6 Reading (themes)
Name
Date
Score/ 16
Pepper's First Week: A Diary
Saturday. Today we collected Pepper from the rescue centre. She is a skinny brown dog with one floppy ear and one ear that stands straight up. In the car, she shook the whole way home, and I held her blanket so she could smell it. I felt nervous too.
Sunday. Pepper hid behind the sofa all day. Mum says rescue dogs sometimes need time to trust people because they do not know what is going to happen next. I lay on the floor and read my comic out loud so she could get used to my voice.
Tuesday. A breakthrough! When I got back from school, Pepper crept out and sniffed my shoes. Then she licked my hand. I stayed completely still, although I wanted to cheer.
Thursday. We went to the park on her lead. A bicycle rang its bell, and Pepper jumped behind my legs. I knelt down and talked to her calmly until her tail started wagging again.
Friday. Tonight Pepper fell asleep with her head on my foot. I didn't move for an hour, even though my foot went numb. I think she has decided she lives here now.
Question 1
Read "Pepper's First Week: A Diary". Is this diary a first-hand or a second-hand account?
- A. second-hand: it was copied from a book
- B. second-hand: the writer only heard about it
- C. neither: it is a poem
- D. first-hand: the writer was there and shares their own feelings
The Climbing Wall
The climbing wall at the leisure centre was twelve metres high, and from the bottom it looked like a mountain covered in brightly coloured sweets. Jaya had watched her older cousin, Ravi, scramble to the top of it a dozen times. Today was her first turn.
The instructor clipped the rope to her harness and checked the knot twice. "Remember," she said, "use your legs, not just your arms. And don't look down until you're ready."
The first few holds were easy. Jaya climbed quickly, buoyed by Ravi's cheers. But halfway up, the holds grew smaller and farther apart. Her arms began to burn. She looked down – and immediately wished she hadn't. The floor seemed impossibly far away, and her legs began to tremble.
"I want to come down," she called.
"You can," the instructor answered calmly. "Or you can rest. Lean back into the harness. The rope's got you."
Jaya didn't believe her. But slowly, she let her weight sink back. The rope held. Her breathing steadied. She looked at the wall in front of her, not at the floor, and noticed a small yellow hold to her right that she hadn't seen before.
Ten minutes later, she slapped the top of the wall. The leisure centre erupted in cheers – or at least Ravi did, which felt like the same thing.
Question 2
Read "The Climbing Wall". What changes for Jaya when she leans back into the harness?
- A. She decides to give up.
- B. She becomes angry with the instructor.
- C. She falls to the floor.
- D. She calms down and notices a new way up.
The Gardener's Ledger
My father kept two books. The first was the ledger in which he recorded every coin that passed through the shop: the price of flour, the cost of the new awning, the debts that customers swore they would settle by Friday. He wrote in it every evening, in a small, upright hand, and he never let anyone else touch it.
The second book I did not discover until after he died. It was a cheap school exercise book, its cover soft with handling, hidden at the back of the shed behind the seed trays. Inside, in the same upright hand, he had recorded something quite different: the date the first snowdrop appeared each year; the night a fox had dug up the tulips; the morning, in 1987, when "M. laughed at the robin on the spade and said it was the bravest bird in England." M. was my mother. I had never heard my father mention her laugh.
For forty years, it seemed, he had been keeping accounts of another kind – of small, unprofitable things that added up to a life. The shop ledger balanced to the penny. The garden book did not balance at all. There were gaps of months, sometimes years. In 1993, the year my mother died, there is only one entry: "Rain."
I used to think my father was a man who cared only for what could be counted. I sat in that cold shed until the light went, reading his small, careful sentences, and understood that I had been reading the wrong book.
Question 3
Read "The Gardener's Ledger". What does the final phrase "I had been reading the wrong book" mean?
- A. He had borrowed the wrong library book.
- B. He should have studied gardening.
- C. He had misread the shop accounts.
- D. He had judged his father by the wrong evidence.
Message in a Bottle (a poem)
I am a bottle, empty and light,
tossed from a boat on a bright summer night.
No note inside me, no secret to tell,
just plastic and air and a sea-salty smell.
The ocean is patient, the ocean is wide;
it rocks me and rolls me from tide to tide.
A turtle swims near me and stares at my shine.
I am not a jellyfish. Please, don't you dine!
I'll drift for a lifetime, I'll drift for a few,
I'll crumble to pieces too tiny for you.
But somebody somewhere could carry me back,
a hand on the beach and a bin in a sack.
So here is my message, though no one wrote it:
the sea keeps whatever we throw. Don't forget it.
Question 4
Read "Message in a Bottle (a poem)". What is the main message of the poem?
- A. Litter we throw into the sea stays there and causes harm.
- B. Summer nights at sea are beautiful.
- C. Everyone should send messages in bottles.
- D. Bottles make good homes for turtles.
Harbour at Dawn (GCSE-style extract)
The harbour did not so much wake as surrender to the morning. Fog lay over the water like a damp grey blanket that someone had forgotten to fold, and the fishing boats nodded at their moorings, half-asleep, their ropes creaking in complaint.
Old Tomas was already there. He was always there. He sat on an upturned crate at the end of the quay, mending a net with fingers that had long ago stopped feeling the cold. His knife flashed, paused, flashed again. Every so often he lifted his head and sniffed the air, as if the sea had written him a letter only he could read.
Behind him, the town stirred reluctantly. A shutter rattled up. A dog barked twice and thought better of it. Somewhere a kettle began its thin, rising whistle. The smell of bread drifted from the bakery on Water Lane and mixed with the older, deeper smells of salt, diesel and fish.
Then the sun arrived. It did not rise so much as break through – one bright blade splitting the fog, then another, until the whole harbour was suddenly ablaze. The water turned from slate to copper. Gulls exploded upward from the harbour wall, screaming. The boats seemed to sit up straighter.
Tomas did not look up. He tied off the last knot, tested it with a sharp tug, and laid the net across his knees like a sleeping cat. Only then did he raise his eyes to the brightening sea, and for a moment, just a moment, his face softened into something very close to a smile.
Question 5
Read "Harbour at Dawn (GCSE-style extract)". Why might the writer end with Tomas's near-smile?
- A. to introduce a new character
- B. to reveal a twist about his identity
- C. to end on a quiet, personal moment after the dramatic sunrise
- D. to show he is angry about the weather
The Shark on the Motorway
During a storm last spring, a photo exploded across social media. It showed a large shark swimming beside cars on a flooded motorway. Within hours it had been shared more than 80,000 times, often with captions such as "Stay indoors — sharks in the streets!"
Fourteen-year-old Amira Haddad saw the photo in her family group chat. Something felt wrong. "The shark looked too sharp compared with the blurry water," she said. "So I decided to check."
First, Amira ran a reverse image search. She found the same shark in a wildlife photo published years earlier, on a website about ocean animals. Next, she checked two local news sites. Neither mentioned sharks; both reported flooding and road closures. Finally, she found an article from a fact-checking organisation explaining that the image had been edited and had appeared during several different storms in different countries.
Amira posted the fact-check in the group chat. "My uncle had already shared the photo," she laughed. "He was embarrassed, but he thanked me."
Fact-checkers say edited images spread fastest when they are shocking and arrive during real emergencies, when people are anxious and want to warn others. Their advice is simple: pause before you share, look for the original source, and check whether reliable outlets are reporting the same thing.
Question 6
Read "The Shark on the Motorway". How is paragraph 3 mainly organised?
- A. as a list of opinions
- B. as a problem with no solution
- C. as a sequence of steps (first, next, finally)
- D. as a comparison of two sharks
Question 7
Every morning, an old fox watched the farm from the hill. One winter, when the snow was deep, the farmer's daughter left scraps by the fence. The fox never touched the hens again, and each spring it brought its cubs to the hill to watch the farm. Which is the best summary of the story?
- A. It snowed a lot one winter.
- B. A girl's kindness to a hungry fox in winter makes the fox leave the farm's hens alone.
- C. The fox had cubs.
- D. Foxes like to sit on hills.
Lady Montagu and the Smallpox Gamble
In the early eighteenth century, smallpox was one of the most feared diseases in Europe. It killed around three in every ten people it infected and left many survivors scarred or blind. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu knew its cruelty personally: the disease had killed her brother and marked her own face.
In 1717, while living in Constantinople (now Istanbul), where her husband was the British ambassador, she observed a remarkable practice. Local women would take a small amount of material from a mild smallpox sore and scratch it into the skin of a healthy person. The person usually developed a mild illness and was then protected for life. This process was called variolation.
Montagu was so impressed that she had her young son variolated. When she returned to England, she campaigned to spread the practice, despite fierce opposition. Some doctors resented being taught by a woman; others distrusted a practice from abroad. To win public confidence, Montagu had her daughter variolated in front of physicians from the royal court.
Variolation was not without risk: a small number of patients developed severe smallpox, and they could infect others. Decades later, in 1796, Edward Jenner developed a safer method using cowpox, a related but much milder disease. His method, called vaccination after the Latin word for cow, gradually replaced variolation.
Smallpox was declared eradicated worldwide in 1980. Jenner is often called the father of vaccination, but the story began with the courage of a woman who noticed what others had overlooked.
Question 8
Read "Lady Montagu and the Smallpox Gamble". What is the writer's main purpose in the final sentence?
- A. to explain how cowpox spreads
- B. to criticise Jenner
- C. to argue against vaccination
- D. to highlight Montagu's often-forgotten role
Question 9
The king had gold, jewels and a hundred rooms, yet he was lonely. The poor shepherd had only a hut, but his family filled it with laughter. What is the theme?
- A. Huts are small.
- B. Shepherds are poor.
- C. Kings are cruel.
- D. Love matters more than wealth.
The Long Wall
The Great Wall of China is not one wall at all. It is a network of walls, trenches and watchtowers built and rebuilt over more than two thousand years by different dynasties. If all its sections were laid end to end, they would stretch over 21,000 kilometres – more than half the distance around the Earth.
The earliest walls were built from packed earth around the seventh century BCE, when rival Chinese states defended their borders from one another. In about 220 BCE, the first emperor of a united China, Qin Shi Huang, ordered many of these separate walls to be joined together to protect the north from raiding groups.
The sections that most visitors see today are far younger. They were built during the Ming dynasty, between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ming builders used bricks and stone, which is why these sections have survived so well. Watchtowers were placed close enough together for soldiers to send signals using smoke by day and fire by night.
The wall came at a terrible cost. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers, prisoners and farmers were forced to work on it, often in freezing mountains or burning deserts. Many died, and stories and songs about their suffering are still told.
Did the wall work? Historians disagree. It slowed down small raids and helped control trade and travel, but determined armies could still break through or simply go around it. Today, its greatest power may be as a symbol – of human effort, of history and of a nation's identity.
Question 10
Read "The Long Wall". Why does the writer include paragraph 4?
- A. to show the human cost of building the wall
- B. to argue that the wall should be knocked down
- C. to describe the wall's shape
- D. to explain how bricks are made
How to Build a Junk Robot
Do you have a pile of empty boxes and bottle tops? Instead of throwing them away, turn them into a robot! This project takes about an hour.
You will need: one cereal box, one smaller box (such as a toothpaste box), four cardboard tubes, bottle tops, glue, scissors and some tape.
Step 1: Ask an adult to help you cut a hole in the top of the cereal box. This will be the robot's body.
Step 2: Glue the smaller box on top of the body to make the head. Hold it in place for a minute while the glue sets.
Step 3: Tape two cardboard tubes to the sides of the body for arms and two to the bottom for legs.
Step 4: Glue bottle tops onto the head for eyes and onto the body for buttons and dials.
Step 5: Leave your robot to dry overnight before you play with it.
Top tip: Give your robot a name and write it on a label. Robots with names are much more fun!
Question 11
Read "How to Build a Junk Robot". What should you do just after gluing on the head?
- A. Give it a name.
- B. Cut a hole in the box.
- C. Leave it to dry overnight.
- D. Hold it in place for a minute.
A Helicopter on Mars
In February 2021, NASA's Perseverance rover landed on Mars. Tucked underneath it was a passenger: a tiny helicopter called Ingenuity. It weighed only about 1.8 kilograms, a little less than a big bag of flour.
Flying on Mars is much harder than flying on Earth. The air on Mars is extremely thin, about one hundredth as thick as the air we breathe. Helicopter blades push against the air to lift off, so with so little air, Ingenuity's blades had to spin very fast: about 2,400 times a minute.
On 19 April 2021, Ingenuity rose about three metres into the Martian sky, hovered for about forty seconds and landed again. It was the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. Engineers on Earth cheered, even though the radio signals took several minutes to reach them.
Ingenuity was only meant to make five test flights. Instead, it made 72. It scouted ahead for the rover, taking photos of rocks and slopes so that drivers on Earth could choose safe routes.
In January 2024, one of Ingenuity's blades was damaged during a landing, and the mission ended. The little helicopter still sits on Mars today, and engineers are already using what they learned to design bigger flying machines for future missions.
Question 12
Read "A Helicopter on Mars". How is this text mainly organised?
- A. in time order, from landing to the end of the mission
- B. as a comparison of two planets
- C. as a problem with no solution
- D. as a list of opinions
The Clever Octopus
If you wanted to design an intelligent animal from scratch, you probably would not start with a creature that has no bones, three hearts and blue blood. Yet the octopus is one of the most remarkable problem-solvers in the animal kingdom.
In laboratories, octopuses have learned to unscrew jar lids to reach crabs inside. Some have escaped from their tanks at night, crept across the floor to a neighbouring tank to eat the fish, and then returned home before morning. In the wild, veined octopuses have been filmed collecting coconut shells, carrying them across the seabed and assembling them into a portable shelter – one of the few known examples of tool use by an invertebrate.
What makes this intelligence so surprising is how different the octopus brain is from ours. About two-thirds of its roughly 500 million nerve cells are not in its head at all but in its eight arms. Each arm can taste, touch and even make simple decisions on its own. Scientists are still debating what it might feel like to be an animal whose thinking is spread throughout its body.
The octopus's cleverness may be linked to its lifestyle. Without a shell for protection, it must outwit predators by hiding, changing colour in a fraction of a second, or squeezing through gaps no bigger than its beak. Survival depends on flexible thinking.
Strangely, most octopuses live only one or two years. They have no parents to teach them and usually die soon after laying eggs. Every skill they show, they must largely work out for themselves.
Question 13
Read "The Clever Octopus". What is the relationship between paragraph 4 and the rest of the text?
- A. It suggests a cause for the octopus's intelligence.
- B. It introduces a counterargument.
- C. It tells a story about a single octopus.
- D. It describes how to keep an octopus.
Question 14
Choose the right word. The words a character speaks in a play are called…
- A. the cast
- B. dialogue
- C. a stanza
- D. stage directions
Should Our School Keep Bees?
Letter A: Yes to bees! Our school should put two beehives on the flat roof above the library. Bees pollinate fruit, vegetables and wildflowers, and in many places their numbers have fallen. A school hive would give local bees a safe home. It would also turn our roof into a living science lesson: we could study how a colony works, measure how much honey it makes, and plant bee-friendly flowers in the playground. Several schools near us already keep bees, and the beekeepers say pupils are never near the hives, because the roof is locked.
Letter B: Not so fast. I agree that bees are important, but I do not think hives are right for our school yet. Some pupils and staff are allergic to bee stings, and even a locked roof is close to open windows. Hives also need an expert to check them every week, and no one at school has that training. Instead, we could help bees in safer ways: plant a wildflower strip by the fence, build a bug hotel, and invite a beekeeper to visit with an observation hive behind glass. If, after a year, we find a trained volunteer, we could think about hives again.
Question 15
Read "Should Our School Keep Bees?". What is the main purpose of both letters?
- A. to entertain with a story
- B. to give instructions
- C. to persuade the reader
- D. to describe a beehive
A Helicopter on Mars
In February 2021, NASA's Perseverance rover landed on Mars. Tucked underneath it was a passenger: a tiny helicopter called Ingenuity. It weighed only about 1.8 kilograms, a little less than a big bag of flour.
Flying on Mars is much harder than flying on Earth. The air on Mars is extremely thin, about one hundredth as thick as the air we breathe. Helicopter blades push against the air to lift off, so with so little air, Ingenuity's blades had to spin very fast: about 2,400 times a minute.
On 19 April 2021, Ingenuity rose about three metres into the Martian sky, hovered for about forty seconds and landed again. It was the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. Engineers on Earth cheered, even though the radio signals took several minutes to reach them.
Ingenuity was only meant to make five test flights. Instead, it made 72. It scouted ahead for the rover, taking photos of rocks and slopes so that drivers on Earth could choose safe routes.
In January 2024, one of Ingenuity's blades was damaged during a landing, and the mission ended. The little helicopter still sits on Mars today, and engineers are already using what they learned to design bigger flying machines for future missions.
Question 16
Read "A Helicopter on Mars". Is this a first-hand or a second-hand account?
- A. first-hand: the writer lives on Mars
- B. first-hand: the writer flew the helicopter
- C. second-hand: the writer reports facts but was not there
- D. first-hand: it is the helicopter's diary
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