Reading level 5: what it looks like and what to practise

What a level 5 story reads like

This is the start of A Hard Nut to Crack, one of Peabody's own stories at level 5 (measured reading ease 4.8). The whole story is free to read, with no account.

Nell was a crow, and she was absolutely famished. It was her first autumn, and all summer long there had been beetles in the grass and bread at the picnic tables and soft fruit that split open on the ground.

The story teaches 5 words, each with a kid-sized meaning. A few: husk (outer shell), seam (joined line), curious (eager to know) and magpie (black-white bird).

Compared with level 4: the longest sentence goes from 32 to 38 words, a screen goes from 55–85 words to 70–100, and the share of words allowed off the familiar-word list goes from 11% to 13%.

What Peabody practises at level 5

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 5

The 20 open stories at level 5 include 14 retold classics and 5 spooky ones, marked as such. Their themes include fairy tale, funny, adventure, courage, magic and animals.

• The Velveteen Rabbit
• The Dragon's Third Riddle
• A Hard Nut to Crack
• The Twelve Dancing Princesses
• Twenty Thousand Leagues
• Pandora's Box

All level 5 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 4 · Level 6 · all levels and grades · the reading levels cheat sheet

Questions parents ask

Which children start at level 5?

Peabody starts a child one level under the grade they say they are in, so the first stories are easy: 6th grade readers start at level 5. The level moves up when books run easy.

How is level 5 measured?

From the text, never from the child. The limits are a longest sentence of 38 words, 70 to 100 words a screen, a Flesch–Kincaid score of 4.5 to 5.5 and at most 13% 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.