Reading level 13: what it looks like and what to practise

What a level 13 story reads like

This is the start of The Junkyard Orchestra, one of Peabody's own stories at level 13 (measured reading ease 13.1). The whole story is free to read, with no account.

The letter from the school district arrived in June, on the final afternoon of the term, folded inside every report card like an apology that nobody had particularly wanted to sign.

The story teaches 5 words, each with a kid-sized meaning. A few: octave (same note, higher), column (tall narrow body), soldered (joined with metal) and collided (crashed together).

Compared with level 12: the longest sentence goes from 70 to 70 words, a screen goes from 140–205 words to 150–220, and the share of words allowed off the familiar-word list goes from 23% to 24%.

What Peabody practises at level 13

At this level the practice brain works on vocabulary and spelling. The skills it holds, in the order it teaches them:

A word a child gets right is done for good and is not asked again, so practice moves on rather than looping. The sight-word lists are pre-primer (40), primer (52), first grade (41), second grade (46) and third grade (41). The full phonics scope and sequence is a free guide.

Free games that practise these skills

Every game below asks questions from the same practice brain, as three big boxes to tap, with no typing. They start from a child's grade, not their reading level, so a game's questions fit the grade they pick.

Two word games sit outside the learning list: Word Rescue (catch falling letters to spell words from your story) and Word Blocks (hop on the word you hear).

The arcade also has two action games with cartoon violence, Sniper and Doomcrawl. We leave them off these lists on purpose; every game is on the games page.

Free stories at level 13

The 9 open stories at level 13 include 5 retold classics and 5 spooky ones, marked as such. Their themes include classic, music, england, friendship, greece and myth.

• The War of the Worlds
• Orpheus and Eurydice
• The Seventeen-Year Summer
• The Storm of 1859
• Moby-Dick
• The Junkyard Orchestra

All level 13 stories are free to read without an account. Each ends with questions of a few kinds: inference, literal and word-in-context.

Other levels

Level 12 · all levels and grades · the reading levels cheat sheet

Questions parents ask

Which children start at level 13?

No grade starts at level 13. Peabody starts a child one level under their grade, so a reader reaches this level by reading up from below as books run easy.

How is level 13 measured?

From the text, never from the child. The limits are a longest sentence of 70 words, 150 to 220 words a screen, a Flesch–Kincaid score of 12.5 to 13.5 and at most 24% of words off the Dale–Chall list.

Is it free?

Yes, free through the end of 2026, with no sign-up. Peabody is a reading app, not an assessment: it cannot hear a child read, so a teacher is the one to ask about fluency.