Grade 3 reading passages with questions

7 passages of 135 to 179 words. Children at this stage start reading to learn, so most of these are nonfiction: how bees make honey, the first airplane flight, solids, liquids and gases, rules and laws, how a lever works and the food chain. There is also a classroom story.

Passages

How to use them in 3rd grade

Ask students to read the text twice, once for the main idea and once to find the evidence for each answer. The sequence texts (the steps of making honey, the events of one December morning) are good for a quick retell with the sentence starters first, next, then, finally. For the science and civics texts, have students sort the key terms into a chart of their own, such as solid, liquid and gas, or producer, consumer and decomposer.

What the text looks like

Short paragraphs, topic words introduced in context, and some sentences with two ideas joined by and, but or because.

Every passage in the set: Kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 2, Grade 4, Grade 5, Grade 6, Grade 7, Grade 8. Or see the whole list, check any text with the readability checker, or time a read with the fluency timer.