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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 19 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.

What a Beaver Dam Does

A beaver does not build a dam for shelter. It builds one to make a pond, and it lives in a lodge in the pond. The dam raises the water so the lodge entrance stays underwater. A predator that cannot swim cannot get in. But the pond does far more than protect one family. Behind a dam, water slows, and slow water drops the silt it carries. Over years this builds rich wet ground. That ground holds water in a drought and holds it back in a flood. It supports plants, insects, amphibians and birds that were not there before. Where beavers have been reintroduced, the number of species in a valley typically rises within five years.

  1. 1. What keeps a predator out of the lodge?
  2. 2. Why does a beaver build a dam?
  3. 3. The text says the pond does more than protect one family. What evidence supports that?
  4. 4. Determine the main idea of this text and explain how key details support it.
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

Lichen

A lichen is not one organism. It is a fungus and an alga living as one body. The fungus provides the structure and holds water. The alga photosynthesises and makes sugar. Separated, the fungus starves and the alga dries out. Because it needs no soil, a lichen can grow on bare rock, on gravestones and on the roofs of cars that have not moved for a decade. Lichens grow extremely slowly — some crustose species less than a millimetre a year. Scientists use that rate to date rock surfaces, a method called lichenometry. Lichens also absorb whatever is in the air. Where the air is dirty, they disappear, which makes them a living measure of pollution.

  1. 1. Determine the main idea of this text and explain how key details support it.
  2. 2. How slowly can a crustose lichen grow?
  3. 3. The text says lichens are a living measure of pollution. What reason is given?
  4. 4. What overall structure does this text use?

LessonPrint · RI.4.10 · Set 19 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Reading a Grade 4 Fact Text

Set 19. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. The entrance stays underwater because the dam raises the water. 2. To make a pond — it lives in a lodge in the pond. 3. The wet ground it builds holds water in drought and flood and supports new plants, insects, amphibians and birds. 4. A beaver dam changes a whole valley, not just one family — supported by the silt, the wet ground and the rise in species.
  2. 2.1. A lichen is a partnership that can live where nothing else can — supported by the bare rock, the slow growth and the pollution sensitivity. 2. Less than a millimetre a year. 3. They absorb whatever is in the air, so they disappear where the air is dirty. 4. It defines, then explains the partnership, then gives two consequences: dating rock and measuring pollution.

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.