Reading a Grade 5 Text is a free printable Grade 5 English worksheet on reading a whole Grade 5 text and answering across it, aligned to Common Core standard RL.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 5 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.

Reading a Grade 5 Text

RL.5.10

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Refusal

The rule was that everyone in Year Six performed at the leavers' assembly. Kemi told Mr Adeyemi she would not. Not could not — would not. He asked why. She said that if she explained, he would try to solve it, and it was not a problem to be solved. It was a decision. He could have made her. Instead he asked whether she would run the sound desk, which nobody had volunteered for and which meant she would be there for every rehearsal. She said yes. At the assembly she was at the back, in the dark, and every cue was perfect. Her mother asked afterwards why she had not been in it. Kemi said she had been.

1. Compare Kemi's position with Mr Adeyemi's response to it.
2. Summarise this story.
3. What did Kemi tell her mother afterwards?
4. What does the sound desk offer tell you about Mr Adeyemi?

2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Mill: Ivy Sallow's Account

We knew by the thread. You cannot work a loom for twenty-two years and not notice when the good cotton stops coming. From about the March, it was the cheap stuff, and it broke. So we knew something. What we did not know was how long we had, and that is the part I mind. I could have been looking. My sister found work in Derby that spring and asked me twice. I said the mill would see me out. He stood on a crate on the Friday and told us. Somebody asked how long he had known. He said he would rather not say. That was the answer, really.

1. Determine a theme of this account and support it with details.
2. Summarise this account.
3. What told the workers something was wrong?
4. Compare Ivy's view of her own choices with her view of Whately's.

LessonPrint · RL.5.10 · Set 5 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Reading a Grade 5 Text

Set 5. Prints on its own sheet.

1.1. She insists it is a decision, not a difficulty; he accepts that framing and offers a role rather than an exemption. 2. Kemi refused to perform at the leavers' assembly, her teacher offered her the sound desk instead, and she ran it perfectly and counted herself as having taken part. 3. That she had been in it. 4. He looked for a way she could take part on her own terms instead of enforcing the rule.
2.1. Being kept from information takes away the chance to act — she could have taken Derby if she had known how long she had. 2. Ivy knew from the failing thread that the mill was struggling, turned down work in Derby, and learned the closure date only when Whately announced it on a Friday. 3. The good cotton stopped coming and the cheap thread broke. 4. She admits she could have been looking and turned down Derby; her complaint is not that he failed, but that he withheld the timing.

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