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Following a Weighed Argument is a free printable Grade 5 English worksheet on holding several competing claims together while reading, aligned to Common Core standard RI.5.10. 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.

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Following a Weighed Argument

RI.5.10

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Mill: The Local Paper, June 1980

Whately's Mill closed on Friday with the loss of 214 jobs, the largest single closure in the town since the war. The mill had run since 1868. At its height it employed more than 600. Mr Whately declined to say when he had known the closure was certain. The Chamber of Commerce has called for a public inquiry; the union has called the closure "predictable for two years". The council says a retraining fund will open in September. Four other textile mills within twenty miles have closed since 1975. Nobody the paper spoke to expected the site to be used for textiles again.

  1. 1. Explain the relationship between this closure and the four earlier ones.
  2. 2. What can you infer from the last sentence?
  3. 3. Summarise this report.
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

How a Vaccine Teaches the Body

Your immune system learns. Meet a disease once and, if you survive it, you are usually protected afterwards. A vaccine gives the lesson without the disease. The method is old. In eighteenth-century Britain, milkmaids were known not to catch smallpox. Edward Jenner reasoned that the cowpox they caught from cattle was protecting them, and in 1796 he tested it on a boy — a procedure no ethics committee would permit now. A modern vaccine shows the immune system a harmless piece of a pathogen: a killed virus, a weakened one, or a single protein from its surface. The body makes antibodies against that piece, and keeps the recipe. Because the recipe is kept, the real pathogen is met by a defence already in place. There is a second effect. If enough people are immune, the pathogen cannot find a chain of hosts, so those who cannot be vaccinated are protected too. That effect fails below a threshold, which is why coverage rather than availability is what matters.

  1. 1. Explain the relationship between the number of people immune and the safety of those who are not.
  2. 2. Why does the text mention that no ethics committee would permit Jenner's test?
  3. 3. Summarise this text.

LessonPrint · RI.5.10 · Set 22 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Following a Weighed Argument

Set 22. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. The report places Whately's within a regional pattern rather than treating it as a single event. 2. That the industry, not just this mill, was considered finished locally. 3. Whately's Mill closed with 214 jobs lost after 112 years, the union called it predictable, the Chamber wants an inquiry, and four nearby mills had already gone.
  2. 2.1. If enough are immune the pathogen cannot find a chain of hosts, so the unvaccinated are protected — but only above a threshold. 2. To be honest that the method's origin would be unacceptable today, without discarding the science. 3. A vaccine shows the immune system a harmless piece of a pathogen so it keeps the antibody recipe, and above a coverage threshold it also protects those who cannot be vaccinated.

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RI.5.10 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.