Skip to content
LessonPrint

Weighing the Evidence is a free printable Grade 5 English worksheet on judging how well a claim is supported, aligned to Common Core standard RI.5.8. 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 17 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

Next set

One paper per pupil

12345678910111213141516171819202122232425

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

Weighing the Evidence

RI.5.8

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.Read the text, then answer the questions.

Two Plants, Two Histories

Tea and coffee are both leaves or seeds steeped in hot water, and both became national habits. How they got there could hardly be more different. Tea came to Britain through a monopoly. The East India Company controlled the trade for nearly two centuries, and the government taxed it so heavily that by the 1770s most tea drunk in Britain had been smuggled. When the tax was cut in 1784, smuggling collapsed almost overnight. Coffee spread through places rather than trade. The coffee house arrived in Britain in the 1650s and became somewhere to read newspapers and argue. Lloyd's of London and the London Stock Exchange both began in one. Tea won the home; coffee won the meeting. Neither plant grows in Britain. Both habits are entirely imported, and both are now so ordinary that they are thought of as native.

  1. 1. The text makes two claims about how each drink spread. Identify the evidence for each.
  2. 2. What is the author's purpose, and how do you know?
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

Why the Thames Froze

Between 1309 and 1814 the Thames froze hard enough to walk on at least twenty-four times. Since 1814 it has not once. The usual explanation is that the climate has warmed. That is part of it, and not most of it. Old London Bridge had nineteen arches on wide stone piers. The piers took up so much of the channel that the bridge acted as a weir, slowing the water upstream almost to a standstill. Still water freezes; moving water does not. The river was also shallower and wider then, spreading over land that has since been embanked. Shallow water loses heat faster. Old London Bridge was demolished in 1831. The embankments were built between 1862 and 1874. The river that flows through London now is narrower, deeper and faster than the one that froze — and it would not freeze in a colder winter than any of those.

  1. 1. What is the author's purpose, and how do you know?
  2. 2. The text gives three reasons for the freezes. Identify them and say which is treated as least important.

LessonPrint · RI.5.8 · Set 17 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Weighing the Evidence

Set 17. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Tea: the East India Company monopoly, the tax and the smuggling. Coffee: the coffee house, and the institutions founded in them. 2. To compare two histories rather than tell one — the structure alternates and the fourth paragraph draws the contrast.
  2. 2.1. To correct a common explanation — the second paragraph names it and downgrades it before giving the real causes. 2. The bridge as a weir, the shallow wide channel, and a colder climate — the climate is called "part of it, and not most of it".

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RI.5.8 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.