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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 21 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.

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. How slowly can a crustose lichen grow?
  2. 2. What two organisms make up a lichen?
  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.

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

LessonPrint · RI.4.10 · Set 21 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Reading a Grade 4 Fact Text

Set 21. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Less than a millimetre a year. 2. A fungus and an alga. 3. A lichen is a partnership that can live where nothing else can — supported by the bare rock, the slow growth and the pollution sensitivity. 4. It defines, then explains the partnership, then gives two consequences: dating rock and measuring pollution.
  2. 2.1. Two thousand litres. 2. Discovering penicillin was only the start — the details about Florey, Chain and two thousand litres show that making it usable was the real work. 3. A clear ring where the bacteria had died. 4. Chronology — 1928, ten years later, and 1944.

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.