This study focuses on cognitive learning strategies that make the student to understand a text. The purpose is to determine the relation between the cognitive strategies and the level of reading comprehension in fifth grade high school students in a public educational institution in Callao. The methodology is descriptive and correlational. The sample was formed by 102 students; there were boys and girls from 16 to 18 to years old. The learning and motivation strategy questionnaire from Ayala, Martínez y Yuste (2004). It was applied to evaluate the cognitive variable for the reading comprehension variable, it was applied the reading comprehension test from Tapia and Silva (1977). The obtained result indicates a significant positive correlation between the variables of study.