Class 3 English Reading Comprehension Worksheet
Class 3 English · Reading comprehension · 38 questions with answers
The sheet for the most common Class 3 English complaint: a child who reads every word correctly and cannot say what the passage was about. That is not a reading problem - it is a comprehension one, and they are separate skills. These questions ask where in the passage the answer was found, because locating evidence is the habit that actually fixes it.
- Answer direct questions about a short passage.
- Point to the sentence in the passage where an answer came from.
- Work out the meaning of an unfamiliar word from the sentence around it.
Exercise 1 of 4 · 10 questions
Read: 'Anu found a small puppy near the gate. It was wet and shivering because it had been raining all morning. She carried it inside and dried it with an old towel. Her mother gave it warm milk. By evening the puppy was running around the house.' Now answer.
Write the answer · Guided
Here’s one done for you
Q: Where did Anu find the puppy? → 'near the gate', and the sentence it came from is the first one. Before writing any answer, find the sentence in the passage that contains it and put a finger on it. Almost every comprehension mistake at this age comes from answering from memory rather than from the text.
- 1)Where did Anu find the puppy?
- 2)Why was the puppy wet?
- 3)What did Anu dry it with?
- 4)Who gave the puppy milk?
- 5)How do we know the puppy felt better by evening?
- 6)Where did Anu carry the puppy to?
- 7)What was the weather like that morning?
- 8)Do you think Anu was kind? Give a reason.
- 9)How do you think the puppy felt when Anu first found it?
- 10)Who else in the family helped the puppy?
Answers
- 1) Near the gate.
- 2) Because it had been raining all morning.
- 3) An old towel.
- 4) Her mother.
- 5) It was running around the house.
- 6) She carried it into the house.
- 7) It had been raining all morning.
- 8) Yes. She picked up a wet puppy, dried it and looked after it instead of leaving it.
- 9) Cold and frightened, because it was wet and alone by the gate.
- 10) Her mother, who gave the puppy milk.
Exercise 2 of 4 · 8 questions
For each answer above, write the first three words of the sentence you found it in.
Write the answer · Practice
Here’s one done for you
This exercise is the whole point of the sheet. A child who can locate the sentence has understood; a child who answers correctly but cannot find the sentence has guessed or remembered, and that stops working as passages get longer.
- 1)Answer 1 came from...
- 2)Answer 2 came from...
- 3)Answer 3 came from...
- 4)Answer 5 came from...
- 5)Answer 6 came from...
- 6)Answer 7 came from...
- 7)Which answer above is NOT written anywhere in the passage?
- 8)Which word in the passage tells you the towel was not new?
Answers
- 1) 'Anu found a...'
- 2) 'It was wet...'
- 3) 'She carried it...'
- 4) 'By evening the...'
- 5) 'She carried it...'
- 6) 'It was wet...'
- 7) The one about whether Anu was kind - the passage never uses the word kind, so that answer is worked out.
- 8) The word 'old', in 'an old towel'.
Exercise 3 of 4 · 10 questions
Read: 'The banyan tree in our village is enormous. Its branches spread so wide that thirty people can sit under it. Birds nest in it all year. In summer the villagers gather beneath it because it is the coolest place around.' Now answer.
Write the answer · Practice
- 1)How many people can sit under the tree?
- 2)What lives in the tree all year?
- 3)Why do villagers gather under it in summer?
- 4)What does 'enormous' mean here?
- 5)What kind of tree is it?
- 6)Where is the tree?
- 7)In which season do the villagers gather under it?
- 8)Which word in the passage means the opposite of 'hottest'?
- 9)Why do birds choose this tree?
- 10)Would ten people fit under the tree? How do you know?
Answers
- 1) Thirty.
- 2) Birds.
- 3) Because it is the coolest place around.
- 4) Very big or huge - we can tell because thirty people fit under its branches.
- 5) It is a banyan tree.
- 6) It is in our village.
- 7) In summer.
- 8) 'Coolest'.
- 9) Because its branches spread very wide, so there is room and shelter for nests all year.
- 10) Yes. Thirty people can sit under it, so ten would fit easily.
Exercise 4 of 4 · 10 questions
Work out what each word means from the sentence. Write your guess.
Write the answer · Challenge
Here’s one done for you
'The path was so narrow that only one person could walk along it' → narrow means thin or not wide. The clue is in the rest of the sentence: only one person fits. Working a word out from its sentence is a far more useful skill than looking every unknown word up.
- 1)The path was so narrow that only one person could walk along it.
- 2)He was exhausted after running the whole way home.
- 3)The soup was piping hot, so she blew on it first.
- 4)The room was silent - nobody spoke, and even the fan was switched off.
- 5)The box was so heavy that two men could hardly lift it.
- 6)She was delighted with her new bicycle and rode it all day.
- 7)The road was slippery after the rain, so he walked very slowly.
- 8)The old man was frail and needed a stick to walk.
- 9)The crowd was enormous - the whole ground was full.
- 10)He glanced at the clock and then went back to his book.
Answers
- 1) narrow = thin or not wide
- 2) exhausted = very tired
- 3) piping hot = very hot
- 4) silent = completely quiet
- 5) heavy = very hard to lift
- 6) delighted = very pleased or happy
- 7) slippery = easy to slide on
- 8) frail = weak, especially from being old
- 9) enormous = very big
- 10) glanced = looked quickly
While your child works
- Insist on finding the sentence before writing the answer. A finger on the line is the single habit that fixes comprehension at this age, and it works immediately.
- If your child reads the passage aloud fluently and still cannot answer, the problem is comprehension rather than reading - which needs discussion of what happened, not more decoding practice.
- For word meanings, ask what the rest of the sentence tells us rather than reaching for a dictionary. Working it out is the transferable skill.