Grade 8 reading passages with questions

5 passages of 258 to 343 words. A history text on how one invention changed who could read, atoms and the periodic table, natural selection and how a refrigerator moves heat, plus a sports story told with closely observed detail.

Passages

How to use them in 8th grade

These suit annotation. Ask students to mark the claim, the evidence and the author's last point in the history text, and to find how the writer builds tension in the story before the pitch. The science texts reward a diagram: have students draw the loop in the refrigerator text, or an atom from the description, and then check it against the passage.

What the text looks like

Long, layered sentences, abstract nouns, a cause-and-effect argument across paragraphs, technical terms defined in the text and, in the story, a final line that needs interpreting.

Every passage in the set: Kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 2, Grade 3, Grade 4, Grade 5, Grade 6, Grade 7. Or see the whole list, check any text with the readability checker, or time a read with the fluency timer.