Reading and comprehending the mother tongue is one of the most important basic academic skills required for the meaningful and significant learning of every subject, especially in earlier stages of education. Though National Policy Frameworks strongly advocate an integrated approach to the teaching of different skills of language, the school does need to pay special attention to reading and writing in many cases, particularly in the case of home languages. However, only a few agencies conducted studies on mother tongue learning at the primary level in Kerala. Elementary level teachers and teacher educators both at pre and in-service levels on an everyday basis have to plan, implement and assess reading comprehension. Hence they are aware of the challenges and possibilities in this respect. The status of reading comprehension in Malayalam was collected from teachers using a detailed online questionnaire. Focus group discussions with experts including DIET faculties, Trainers from Block Resource Centers and Resource persons of in-service teacher training programmes were conducted. Commendable teaching-learning and assessment practices related to reading at the elementary level, the related challenges and limitations were identified in ways that would help practitioners in improving the teaching and assessment of L1 reading comprehension in Malayalam.