KS2 English Reading — Practice Set 1

Time: 1 hour Marks: 50

Read one text and answer its questions before moving on.

This is practice in the shape of the 2026 national test. The texts are original.

Contents

1. The Lost Compass — pages 2–3 (story)

2. Workshop Saturday — pages 4–5 (first-person story)

3. The Mary Rose — pages 6–7 (information)

The Lost Compass

This is a story about two cousins who find something unexpected on a beach.

'There — by the groyne!' Nia pointed. A dark circle sat in the wet sand, half-covered by a ribbon of seaweed.

Nia and Callum were walking the winter beach at St Agnes. The tide had gone out a long way. Pools shone like broken mirrors.

Callum reached it first. He picked the object up and turned it on his palm. It was a brass compass, the glass cracked but the needle still trembling.

'It still works,' he whispered.

Nia wiped the face with her sleeve. The letters N S E W were worn almost smooth. On the back, in tiny scratched writing, were the words: For J. keep north.

Callum looked towards the headland. 'Someone meant this to be used.'

Nia frowned. The wind tugged her hood. She did not like the idea of a lost thing that still wanted something.

'We should take it to the harbour office,' she said. 'They keep a box for things the tide brings in.'

Callum hesitated. He wanted to keep walking with it, just to see if the needle would settle on the path to the headland. Then he thought of the scratched words and nodded.

They wrapped the compass in Callum's scarf and turned back along the sand. Behind them the sea began to fill the pools again.

Workshop Saturday

This is an extract from a book about a girl who learns to mend things.

People think mending is dull. People are wrong.

I am Lila, eleven, and I have oil under my fingernails on purpose. Saturday mornings I spend in Mr Okeke's repair shop on Canal Street. The bell over the door makes a tired little sound, as if it has seen every broken kettle in the town.

Mr Okeke does not talk much. He points. I watch. Then I try.

Last Saturday a woman brought in a lamp that would not light. The wire inside had perished. We stripped it back, twisted new copper, and taped it so it could not fray. When she switched it on, the shop window held a small new sun.

Mr Okeke said, 'Again.' That is his highest praise.

I have a notebook titled Things that refuse to die. In it I draw hinges, plugs, the inside of a clock. I do not always know the names. I know the look of a problem.

My brother thinks I should be playing football. I tell him a football is just another thing that needs air and a patch. He groans. I grin.

The shop smells of dust and warm metal. I would not swap it for a Saturday on a pitch. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

The Mary Rose

A Tudor warship

The Mary Rose was a warship built for King Henry VIII. She first went to sea in 1511 and served for more than thirty years. In July 1545, during a battle in the Solent, she sank in shallow water near Portsmouth.

Why she sank

No one wrote down one certain cause. Some historians think she turned too quickly with her gun-ports still open. Water rushed in. She went down in minutes. About 500 men were on board. Very few survived.

Finding her again

For centuries the wreck lay in mud, which kept a great deal of her timber and the objects inside from rotting. Divers found her in 1971. In 1982 the remaining hull was lifted in a huge steel frame, watched by millions on television.

What the wreck tells us

Thousands of objects were recovered: longbows, shoes, cooking pots, a pocket sundial, even the skeleton of the ship's dog. Together they show ordinary life on a Tudor ship, not only the story of a battle.

Seeing her today

The hull is kept in a museum in Portsmouth. The air around the wood is carefully controlled so it does not dry and crack. Visitors walk above and beside the ship on glass galleries.

The Mary Rose is no longer a secret on the seabed. She is evidence you can stand next to.