Skip to content
LessonPrint

Reading a Grade 5 Fact Text is a free printable Grade 5 English worksheet on reading a whole argued text and answering across it, 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.

Set 12 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

Next setLesson plan

One paper per pupil

12345678910111213141516171819202122232425

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

Reading a Grade 5 Fact Text

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. Determine two main ideas of this report and explain how details support each.
  2. 2. How many jobs were lost?
  3. 3. Two organisations react. Identify which reason belongs to which.
  4. 4. How many other mills within twenty miles had closed since 1975?
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. Name the three kinds of harmless piece a vaccine can show.
  2. 2. What did Jenner reason about milkmaids?
  3. 3. In what year did Jenner test his idea?
  4. 4. The text makes two claims. Identify which evidence supports which.

LessonPrint · RI.5.10 · Set 12 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Reading a Grade 5 Fact Text

Set 12. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. First, this was the town's largest closure since the war — supported by the 214 jobs. Second, it was part of a regional decline — supported by the four other mills since 1975. 2. 214. 3. The Chamber of Commerce wants an inquiry; the union claims the closure was predictable for two years. 4. Four.
  2. 2.1. A killed virus, a weakened one, or a single surface protein. 2. That the cowpox they caught from cattle protected them from smallpox. 3. 1796. 4. The claim that vaccines teach the immune system is supported by the antibody recipe; the claim about collective protection is supported by the chain-of-hosts threshold.

More practice for RI.5.10

Read and understand harder Grade 4-5 information texts on your own.

Teaching this next? Reading Grade 5 Informational Texts is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

All Grade 5 worksheets

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