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The Lemonade Stand

4th grade fiction passage about friendship and money: 216 words, five questions, an answer key and vocabulary.

4th grade fiction friendship and money 216 words

The Lemonade Stand

Dana and her cousin Priya set up a lemonade stand on the first hot Saturday of summer. They had a folding table, a big pitcher, and a sign that Dana had painted with bright yellow letters.

By noon, they had sold six cups. "This is slow," said Priya. "I thought we would make a lot more money."

Dana looked down the street. The corner house had a yard sale, and people were walking right past their table. "We need to be where the people are," she said.

They carried the table to the corner and set it up near the yard sale. Soon a small line formed. A man in a baseball cap bought two cups. A girl asked for a refill. By two o'clock, the pitcher was empty.

Priya counted the coins and bills. "We made twenty-two dollars!" she shouted. "What should we do with it?"

Dana thought for a moment. She remembered the animal shelter near the library that was collecting food for dogs. "What if we give half to the shelter?" she suggested.

Priya smiled. "I like that idea. We can keep half for ourselves, and then we can use it to buy more lemons next weekend."

The next Saturday, a new sign hung on the stand: "Lemonade for a good cause."

Questions

  1. What did Dana paint on the sign? in the text

  2. Why was business slow at first? in the text

  3. What did the girls do to fix the problem? in the text

  4. How much money did they make, and what did they decide to do with it? in the text

  5. What does the new sign tell you about what the girls learned? think about it

Words to know

pitcher
a container with a handle and a spout for pouring drinks
refill
another serving of the same drink
shelter
a place that cares for animals without homes
cause
something people care about and work to help

How to use it

  1. Press Read it big (or B) to put the text on the projector, or Full screen (F) to fill the whole screen.
  2. Ask the questions one at a time and use Show answer when the class has decided. A shows or hides every answer.
  3. Print student copy for the class, or Print with answers for yourself.

Ideas for class

  • Before reading, put pitcher, refill, shelter and cause on the board with their meanings from the Words to know section and have students predict what the story will be about.
  • Read it aloud once while students follow along, then have them reread it alone or with a partner. At a calm 100 words a minute it takes about 2 minutes to read aloud.
  • Use the Read it big button (or B) to put the text on the projector, and Show answer on one question at a time so the class commits to an answer first.
  • Question 5 asks the reader to infer. Ask students to point to the words in the passage that led them to their answer.
  • Ask students to retell the story in three sentences: how it began, what the problem was, and how it ended.
  • Print the student copy for independent work and keep the answer-key copy for yourself.

Related

Questions

What reading level is "The Lemonade Stand"?

It was written for 4th grade. It has 216 words and works out to a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of about 3.1. That is a formula's estimate from sentence length and syllables, and it is not a Lexile or a guided reading level, so check it against your students.

What do the questions ask?

There are five. 4 ask for something the text says directly and 1 ask the reader to work something out from clues. Each has an answer in the key, and the answers are written as a teacher would accept them, not as the only possible wording.

How long does it take to read?

About 2 minutes read aloud at 100 words a minute. For a one-minute fluency check, paste it into the fluency timer and use the word count.

Can I print it?

Yes. Print student copy gives the passage, the questions with lines to write on, and the word meanings. Print with answers gives the same page with the answers filled in. Both are made in your browser.

Is this passage from a published book?

No. It was written for Peabody Teach, so there is no book to buy and no login to read it.

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