Prayer (salat) is an obligatory practice for Muslim adolescents, yet knowing how to pray does not always lead to self-directed performance. This study examined whether understanding of prayer meaning is associated with prayer awareness among seventh-grade students at Al Hikmah Junior High School Surabaya, Indonesia. A quantitative correlational design with purposive sampling was employed, involving one of the five seventh-grade classes. Of the 23 students enrolled in the selected class, 21 completed an expert-validated 10-item objective test of prayer meaning (0–100) and a 16-item four-point Likert questionnaire of prayer awareness (16–64). Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Shapiro–Wilk and linearity tests, and simple linear regression. Understanding of prayer meaning (M = 75.24, SD = 15.37) and prayer awareness (M = 42.48, SD = 7.01; 66.37%) were both in the high category. Residuals were normally distributed (p = .214), and understanding of prayer meaning was a statistically significant positive predictor of prayer awareness (B = 0.263, t = 2.836, p = .010, R² = .298; approximate 95% CI of B [0.07, 0.46]). The model accounted for 29.8% of the variance in prayer awareness, while the remaining 70.2% was not explained by the model. In conclusion, meaning-oriented Islamic Religious Education may support prayer awareness. However, the findings are limited to one purposively selected class and require further examination involving larger and more varied samples.