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Reading a Grade 4 Fact Text is a free printable Grade 4 English worksheet on reading a whole information text and answering across it, aligned to Common Core standard RI.4.10. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions that each ask different questions, so no two pupils in the class work from the same page. Print it from the browser or download it as a PDF — no account, no email.

Set 12 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

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Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. All 25 sets ask different questions.

Reading a Grade 4 Fact Text

RI.4.10

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.Read the text, then answer the questions.

How Penicillin Was Found

In 1928 Alexander Fleming went on holiday and left a stack of dishes on a bench. Each held a colony of bacteria. When he came back, one dish had a spot of mould on it. Around the mould was a clear ring where the bacteria had died. Fleming realised the mould was producing something that killed bacteria. He named it penicillin and published a paper. Almost nobody noticed. Ten years later, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain read that paper and tried to make penicillin in quantity. That turned out to be the hard part: it took two thousand litres of mould fluid to treat one patient. By 1944 the problem had been solved and penicillin was reaching soldiers in the field.

  1. 1. What did he see around the mould?
  2. 2. How much mould fluid did it take to treat one patient?
  3. 3. Determine the main idea of this text and explain how key details support it.
  4. 4. What overall structure does this text use?
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Longitude Problem

A ship's latitude — how far north or south it is — can be found from the height of the sun at noon. Sailors could do that for centuries. Longitude, how far east or west, was the problem. It has no natural marker. The solution was known in principle: compare the time on board with the time at a fixed place. The Earth turns fifteen degrees an hour, so every hour of difference is fifteen degrees of longitude. That required a clock that stayed accurate on a rolling, salty, temperature-swinging ship. No such clock existed. John Harrison, a carpenter, spent forty-three years building four. The fourth, finished in 1759, was the size of a large pocket watch and lost five seconds in eighty-one days at sea.

  1. 1. How many degrees does the Earth turn in an hour?
  2. 2. Determine the main idea of this text and explain how key details support it.
  3. 3. How long did Harrison spend on the problem?
  4. 4. How could sailors find their latitude?

LessonPrint · RI.4.10 · Set 12 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Reading a Grade 4 Fact Text

Set 12. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. A clear ring where the bacteria had died. 2. Two thousand litres. 3. Discovering penicillin was only the start — the details about Florey, Chain and two thousand litres show that making it usable was the real work. 4. Chronology — 1928, ten years later, and 1944.
  2. 2.1. Fifteen. 2. Finding longitude was a clockmaking problem, not an astronomy one — supported by the fifteen-degree rule and Harrison's watch. 3. Forty-three years. 4. From the height of the sun at noon.

More practice for RI.4.10

Read and understand Grade 4-5 information texts by the year's end.

Teaching this next? Reading Grade 4 Informational Texts is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

All Grade 4 worksheets

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RI.4.10 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.