Use this engaging year 6 reading comprehension story to allow children to apply their reading skills with a range of questions.

This Over the River narrative text contains a short story about a boy who finds himself beside a river in strange and mysterious circumstances, and, alongside the story text, there is a variety of comprehension questions covering all eight reading content domains. We've also included some more in-depth questions for more detailed written answers.

With our reading skills resources, you have the flexibility to decide how to use the text and the questions: you can give the whole text and all of the questions, target questions for specific domains, or go page by page using only questions that are related to that part of the text. We've also included a time-saving answer matrix to make marking easier and for making self or peer marking more accessible.

National Curriculum Objectives:

• English Year 5 & Year 6: Maintain positive attitudes to reading and understanding of what is read.
• English Year 5 & Year 6: Understand what they read by exploring the meaning of words in context; drawing inferences and justifying inferences with evidence; predicting what might happen from details stated and implied; summarising the main ideas drawn from more than one paragraph and identifying key details that support the main ideas; and identifying how language, structure and presentation contribute to meaning.
• English Year 5 & Year 6: Evaluate how authors use language, including figurative language, considering the impact on the reader.