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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.

Set 13 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.

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.

Two Plants, Two Histories

Tea and coffee are both leaves or seeds steeped in hot water, and both became national habits. How they got there could hardly be more different. Tea came to Britain through a monopoly. The East India Company controlled the trade for nearly two centuries, and the government taxed it so heavily that by the 1770s most tea drunk in Britain had been smuggled. When the tax was cut in 1784, smuggling collapsed almost overnight. Coffee spread through places rather than trade. The coffee house arrived in Britain in the 1650s and became somewhere to read newspapers and argue. Lloyd's of London and the London Stock Exchange both began in one. Tea won the home; coffee won the meeting. Neither plant grows in Britain. Both habits are entirely imported, and both are now so ordinary that they are thought of as native.

  1. 1. The text makes two claims about how each drink spread. Identify the evidence for each.
  2. 2. Quote accurately the sentence that sums up the contrast.
  3. 3. What is the author's purpose, and how do you know?
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. Identify which evidence supports which of the three causes.
  3. 3. What is the author's purpose, and how do you know?

LessonPrint · SL.5.3 · Set 13 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — A Speaker's Claims and Support

Set 13. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Tea: the East India Company monopoly, the tax and the smuggling. Coffee: the coffee house, and the institutions founded in them. 2. "Tea won the home; coffee won the meeting." 3. To compare two histories rather than tell one — the structure alternates and the fourth paragraph draws the contrast.
  2. 2.1. "which suggests the cost argument is not the whole story". 2. Cost: the wage difference. Investment: pre-war machinery and the survival of re-equipped firms. Concentration: the single-employer towns and the population figures. 3. To weigh three explanations rather than assert one — each is introduced and then qualified.

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.

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