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Grade 4 reading passages with questions

7 original 4th grade passages with five to seven questions, an answer key and vocabulary. Print them or read them big.

7 passages of 165 to 216 words. Texts that explain: why leaves change color, what makes thunder, how a volcano erupts, the three branches of government, how electricity reaches a home and how fossils form. There is also a story with a decision to make.

Passages

How to use them in 4th grade

Fourth grade is where many readers meet explanation texts. Have students draw the cause-and-effect chain as arrows before answering. For the government text, have them make a three-column chart of the branches and what each one does. For the story, ask what the characters wanted, what stopped them, and what they did. Answers should point back to a sentence in the text.

What the text looks like

Explanations built from several linked sentences, vocabulary such as substance, magma, branch and circuit, and questions that ask why.

Every passage in the set: Kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 2, Grade 3, 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.

Questions

What does 4th grade reading level mean here?

Each passage here is checked with the Flesch-Kincaid formula, and for this grade the result has to be 2.5 to 6. It is a formula, so use your own judgment, and your own students, to decide whether a text is right.

Can I print them?

Yes. Every passage has Print student copy, with lines to write the answers on, and Print with answers, which fills them in.

Where do the passages come from?

They were written for Peabody Teach. None is copied from a book, a test or another site.