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Integrate Several Texts is a free printable Grade 5 English worksheet on using two texts together to write about a subject, aligned to Common Core standard RI.5.9. 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 10 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.

Integrate Several Texts

RI.5.9

NameDate

Read Text 1 and answer the question under it.

1.Read Text 1 and answer the question under it.

Text 1: Why the Rails Are That Far Apart

Standard gauge is 4 feet 8½ inches. It is a strange number, and the reason is historical rather than engineering. Early railways were built by people who had built tramways for collieries, and those had used the wheel spacing of the carts already in use. Nobody chose it; it was inherited. Isambard Kingdom Brunel did choose. He built the Great Western at 7 feet ¼ inch, and by most measures it was better: faster, steadier, and able to carry more. He lost anyway. By the 1840s, more of the network was already standard gauge, and a train cannot run on a track it does not fit. Parliament settled it in 1846. Between 1846 and 1892 the Great Western converted its entire route. The final conversion took a single weekend and about four thousand men. The best design does not always win. The one that connects to everything else does.

  1. 1. What gauge did Brunel choose?
2.Now read Text 2 and answer these questions about BOTH texts.

Text 2: 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. How does this text's ending differ from the canal text's?
  2. 2. What do the personal accounts give that this cannot?
  3. 3. What does this text give that the mill accounts cannot?

LessonPrint · RI.5.9 · Set 10 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Integrate Several Texts

Set 10. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. 7 feet ¼ inch.
  2. 2.1. This states its general conclusion outright; the canal text ends on an observation about holidaymakers. 2. The reasoning of one owner and the cost to one worker who turned down other work. 3. The national pattern — four fifths of jobs, and why the losses show in some towns and not in the country's figures.

More practice for RI.5.9

Combine several texts on one topic into knowledgeable writing.

Teaching this next? Integrating Several Texts on a Topic is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

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Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RI.5.9 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.