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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 9 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.

Pandora

The gods made Pandora and gave her, between them, everything: beauty, skill, a voice, curiosity. They also gave her a jar, and told her not to open it. They did not say what was in it. She kept it for a long time. The story is usually told as though she opened it immediately. She did not. When she did lift the lid, out came sickness, hunger, grief and every trouble that has since been ordinary. She got the lid back on with one thing still inside. That thing was hope. And people have argued for three thousand years about whether keeping it in was a mercy or the cruellest part of all.

  1. 1. What does "She kept it for a long time" add to her character?
  2. 2. What did the gods give Pandora?
  3. 3. Compare Pandora's gifts with what happens to her.
  4. 4. Determine a theme of this myth and support it with details.
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

Orpheus Looks Back

Orpheus played so well that rivers changed course to listen. When his wife Eurydice died, he went down to argue with the dead. He played to the ferryman, who took him free. He played to the three-headed dog, which lay down. He played to the king of the underworld, who wept, and who had never wept. The king gave one condition. Eurydice would follow him up, and he must not look back until both of them stood in the light. He climbed for a day. He could not hear her footsteps — the dead make none — and he had only the king's word. Ten paces from the daylight, he turned round. She was there. That was the last he saw of her.

  1. 1. Compare Orpheus's gift with what it fails to do for him.
  2. 2. Why could Orpheus not hear Eurydice behind him?
  3. 3. Summarise this myth.
  4. 4. What was the king's condition?

LessonPrint · RL.5.10 · Set 9 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Reading a Grade 5 Text

Set 9. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. It makes her deliberate rather than impulsive, which is the opposite of the usual telling. 2. Beauty, skill, a voice and curiosity — and a jar. 3. Curiosity is given to her by the same gods who then forbid her the one thing it would act on. 4. You can be set up to fail — the gods gave her curiosity and then a forbidden jar.
  2. 2.1. His music moves rivers, a ferryman, a monster and a god who had never wept — and none of it lets him trust a silence. 2. The dead make no footsteps. 3. Orpheus played his way into the underworld and won Eurydice back on condition he not look at her, then turned ten paces from daylight and lost her. 4. That Orpheus must not look back until both of them stood in the light.

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