Reading level 6: what it looks like and what to practise

What a level 6 story reads like

This is the start of Slow Motion Animals, one of Peabody's own stories at level 6 (measured reading ease 5.7). The whole story is free to read, with no account.

A sloth is a furry mammal that spends nearly its whole life hanging in the trees of the rainforest. Sloths live in Central America and South America, where the air is warm and wet all year. There are six kinds, and they fall into two groups: some have two long claws on each front foot, and some have three.

The story teaches 5 words, each with a kid-sized meaning. A few: mammal (furry, milk-making animal), digest (break down food), algae (tiny green plants) and rainforest (wet tropical forest).

Compared with level 5: the longest sentence goes from 38 to 40 words, a screen goes from 70–100 words to 80–115, and the share of words allowed off the familiar-word list goes from 13% to 15%.

What Peabody practises at level 6

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 6

The 14 open stories at level 6 include 10 retold classics and 2 spooky ones, marked as such. Their themes include classic, myth, adventure, animals, courage and giants.

• Slow Motion Animals
• Aladdin
• Pinocchio
• Persephone and the Seasons
• The Deep Field
• Trouble on Apollo 13

All level 6 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 5 · Level 7 · all levels and grades · the reading levels cheat sheet

Questions parents ask

Which children start at level 6?

Peabody starts a child one level under the grade they say they are in, so the first stories are easy: 7th grade readers start at level 6. The level moves up when books run easy.

How is level 6 measured?

From the text, never from the child. The limits are a longest sentence of 40 words, 80 to 115 words a screen, a Flesch–Kincaid score of 5.5 to 6.5 and at most 15% 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.