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Self-Correct in a Dense Text is a free printable Grade 5 English worksheet on rereading an argued text until the reasoning is clear, aligned to Common Core standard RF.5.4. 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 21 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.

Self-Correct in a Dense Text

RF.5.4

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.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. What does "threshold" mean here?
  2. 2. Name the three kinds of harmless piece a vaccine can show.
  3. 3. In what year did Jenner test his idea?
  4. 4. What is a "pathogen"?
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

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 many textile jobs were lost between 1965 and 1990?
  2. 2. How old was much of the British machinery?
  3. 3. What did a mill closing often take with it?
  4. 4. What does "labour-intensive" mean?

LessonPrint · RF.5.4 · Set 21 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Self-Correct in a Dense Text

Set 21. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. The level of coverage below which the collective effect stops working. 2. A killed virus, a weakened one, or a single surface protein. 3. 1796. 4. An organism that causes disease.
  2. 2.1. Roughly four fifths. 2. It dated from before the war. 3. The town's only employer, plus the suppliers and shops that depended on it. 4. Needing a great deal of human work relative to machinery.

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RF.5.4 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.