5th grade reading worksheets 12 sheets
Stories and fact passages for fifth graders, longer than the earlier grades’, each with four questions: one found in the text, one on what a word means, one on why or how, and one to answer with evidence. Print one, change it on its own page, or take the whole set as one PDF with the answer keys at the back.
The whole set in one PDF
All 12 sheets on this page, after a contents page, with the answer keys together at the back: 23 pages.
12 sheets
Stories 4
The Case of the Missing Socks
A story, 237 words, with four questions and an answer key.
Common Core RL.5.1
Fact passages 6
Wolves Return to Yellowstone
Facts from the National Park Service, 227 words, with four questions and an answer key.
Common Core RI.5.1
How a Tsunami Travels
Facts from NOAA, 230 words, with four questions and an answer key.
Common Core RI.5.1
How a Glacier Is Born
Facts from the National Park Service, 241 words, with four questions and an answer key.
Common Core RI.5.1
The International Space Station
Facts from NASA, 233 words, with four questions and an answer key.
Common Core RI.5.1
How Bats Find Food in the Dark
Facts from the National Park Service, 243 words, with four questions and an answer key.
Common Core RI.5.1
The Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
Facts from the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, 223 words, with four questions and an answer key.
Common Core RI.5.1
Organizers 2
Main idea and details
A main idea at the top, the details that support it, and a summary.
Common Core RI.5.2
No sheets match that. Try a shorter word.
How the passages are chosen
Each passage is placed by the three things the Common Core weighs in a text: a readability score (Flesch-Kincaid, whose range for the grades 4 to 5 band is 4.51 to 7.73; these read inside it), how the text is built and the words it uses, and what the questions ask of the reader. A child who reads easily can go on to the next grade’s page, and one who needs more practice can go back a grade; choose by how the child reads, not only by grade.
The questions
Every passage has four questions. The first is found in the text; the second asks what a word means as the passage uses it, and which words around it show that; the third asks why something happened, in what order, or how two things compare; the last asks for the reader’s own answer, backed by the passage, so the key gives a sample. The answer key follows each passage, and in the whole set the keys come together at the back. The card names the standard the questions practise: RL.5.1 and RI.5.1 for reading closely and answering from the text.
Comparing and summing up
Grade 5 asks a reader to compare two characters or events, and to find more than one main idea in a text. The Venn diagram takes two characters, or two things a passage compares; the main idea organizer takes a main idea and the details that support it.
The whole set
The set prints every sheet on this page once, in the order shown, after a contents page that lists them with their page numbers. The answer keys come together at the back, so you can hand out the passages and keep the keys apart. On its own page, each passage can be printed alone, in bold type for a young reader, or on A4.