Compare Accounts in Nonfiction Passages About the 1904 Fair

Have your child read the passage once for the gist and again with a pencil, noting paragraph numbers. For paired texts, read Text A and Text B before turning to the questions. Check with the answer key, which lists other answers the passage supports.

Compare a made-up visitor's diary of the 1904 St. Louis fair with a report on its ice cream cones. A diary tells about each day in the writer's own words. The directions on the page read: Read Text A. Then, turn the page and read Text B. On page 2: Read Text B. Then, turn the page and answer the questions. On page 3: Use Texts A and B. Fill in the chart, 1 to 6. Then, answer 7 to 9. The answer key covers the questions on page 3.

Yes, both. We made it for 5th Grade paragraphs & passages, and the page works the same whether it lands on a kitchen table or a center rotation. At home, most families go through it together and talk the answers out loud, and that talking is where most of the learning happens with nonfiction passages. In class it runs well as independent work while you pull a small group. Print one copy or thirty, whichever the day needs.

A nonfiction passage, also called informational text, gives true facts about real people, places and events. Each 5th grade sheet has a passage or two short texts on one topic, then a page of questions, and every sheet has an answer key.

Look at what each part of the text is mostly about. A subheading often marks where a new big idea starts, so ask what the details in each part have in common. On the Silk Road sheet, one part tells how goods such as silk traveled and the other tells how ideas such as papermaking and Buddhism spread. Students write each main idea in a web with two key details under it, then summarize using both.

To quote accurately is to copy the exact words of a text inside quotation marks, without changing or leaving out a word (RI.5.1). On the quoting sheets, students read an inference, such as Sequoyah was very patient, then copy the sentence that supports it with its paragraph number.

The writers are made up, and each page says so, but the facts in them are real. Made-up writers argue about cursive, recess and public pools, and the made-up diaries and letters about Gettysburg, Sputnik and Apollo 13 sit next to a true secondhand report to compare.

Each sheet has a passage page and a question page, and the paired text sheets add a third page. The 56 newest nonfiction sheets have six or nine items: a web, chart or chain to fill in, multiple choice questions with three options and a written answer. The older 20 nonfiction and 20 fiction sheets mix multiple choice and short written answers.

They are longer and the questions go deeper. Students find two main ideas in one text, quote a passage accurately to back an inference, compare the structure of two texts on the same topic, and combine facts from a text, a table and a map. The stories ask about theme, point of view and figurative language.

The 76 nonfiction passages cover history, science and people, such as Machu Picchu, Mae Jemison, the Berlin Wall, Mars rovers and the Nile, plus older sheets on vaccines and black holes. The 20 stories include The Last Train Home, The Tide Pool Mystery and The Dragon Who Could Not Fly.

Yes. All 96 sheets have an answer key. Written questions show a sample answer, and on the newest sheets every chart and web box lists other answers the passage supports.