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What Each Text Contributes is a free printable Grade 5 English worksheet on identifying what one text supplies that another does not, aligned to Common Core standard RI.5.9. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions, 23 of them with 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 24 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

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Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. 23 of these 25 sets ask different questions — this skill does not have 25 questions to give. The rest reorder them, so no two pupils have the same paper in front of them.

What Each Text Contributes

RI.5.9

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.Read the text, then answer the questions.

Canals and Railways

Between 1760 and 1830 Britain built about four thousand miles of canal. Within forty years of that, most of it was losing money. A canal boat carried thirty tons behind one horse, where a cart carried two. That was transformative for coal and stone, which are heavy, cheap and not in a hurry. But a canal cannot climb without locks, cannot be built where there is no water, and freezes. A boat averaged three miles an hour. The railways did not beat canals on cost per ton at first. They beat them on speed, on reliability, and on where they could go — a railway can cross a watershed a canal cannot. Many canal companies were bought by railway companies, sometimes specifically in order to close them. By 1900 most of the network carried nothing. Some of it is now used more than it ever was, by people on holiday.

  1. 1. What do both texts argue about being replaced?
  2. 2. How does this text's structure differ from "Two Plants, Two Histories"?
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. What does this text give that the mill accounts cannot?
  2. 2. What do the personal accounts give that this cannot?

LessonPrint · RI.5.9 · Set 24 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — What Each Text Contributes

Set 24. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Both show that what wins is not always what is cheapest — reach and habit matter more. 2. This is chronological with a comparison inside it; that one is a comparison throughout.
  2. 2.1. The national pattern — four fifths of jobs, and why the losses show in some towns and not in the country's figures. 2. The reasoning of one owner and the cost to one worker who turned down other work.

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RI.5.9 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.