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A Speaker's Claims and Support is a free printable Grade 5 English worksheet on summarising claims and explaining what supports each, aligned to Common Core standard SL.5.3. 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.

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

A Speaker's Claims and Support

SL.5.3

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.Read the text, then answer the questions.

What Sleep Is For

Sleep is not switching off. Parts of the brain are busier asleep than awake. Two claims are well supported. The first is that sleep consolidates memory: during deep sleep, the day's experiences are replayed and moved from short-term storage into long-term. Interrupt deep sleep and recall of the previous day drops measurably. The second is that sleep clears waste. The spaces between brain cells widen during sleep, and fluid washes through, removing proteins that build up while awake. A third claim — that a particular number of hours suits everybody — is not supported. Need varies with age and between individuals, and self-reported sleep is unreliable. Teenagers are a special case. Their body clocks genuinely shift later at puberty, which is a biological fact rather than a preference, and school start times mostly ignore it.

  1. 1. Quote accurately the words the author uses to reject the third claim.
  2. 2. What is the author's purpose, and how do you know?
  3. 3. Three claims are made. Identify which evidence supports which, and which has none.
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

What Happened to the Textile Towns

Between 1965 and 1990 the British textile industry lost roughly four fifths of its jobs. Three causes are usually given, and they are not equally weighted. Cost is the one most often cited. Spinning and weaving are labour-intensive, and wages in the countries that took the work were a fraction of British wages. This explains a great deal. Investment matters too. Much British machinery dated from before the war. Where firms did re-equip — and some did — they survived longer, which suggests the cost argument is not the whole story. The third cause is the hardest to see: the industry was concentrated. A car plant closing takes a town's largest employer; a mill closing often took its only one, along with the suppliers and the shops that depended on it. That concentration is why the closures show up in the population figures of particular towns and not in national ones.

  1. 1. Quote accurately the words that qualify the cost argument.
  2. 2. What is the author's purpose, and how do you know?
  3. 3. Identify which evidence supports which of the three causes.

LessonPrint · SL.5.3 · Set 10 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — A Speaker's Claims and Support

Set 10. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. "is not supported". 2. To separate what is well supported from what is not — each claim is labelled before its evidence. 3. Memory: the replay and the recall drop. Waste: the widening spaces and fluid. The fixed number of hours has no support and is rejected.
  2. 2.1. "which suggests the cost argument is not the whole story". 2. To weigh three explanations rather than assert one — each is introduced and then qualified. 3. Cost: the wage difference. Investment: pre-war machinery and the survival of re-equipped firms. Concentration: the single-employer towns and the population figures.

More practice for SL.5.3

Summarise a speaker's claims and say what supports each one.

Teaching this next? Summarising a Speaker's Argument is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

All Grade 5 worksheets

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to SL.5.3 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.