A 5th grade reading passage explains how muscles grow stronger. It covers the 600 muscles in the body, muscle fibers, micro-tears from hard exercise, rest and sleep, protein, the heart as a muscle and warming up before a game. Nine questions follow, grouped as Retrieve, Infer and Evaluate, with multiple choice, short answers and a true or false table. The sheet ties to Common Core RI.5.1, and the last page is an answer key.
RI.5.1
“Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.”
Question 6 asks for a quoted phrase, question 8 asks for evidence from the passage and question 9 asks students to explain with evidence from the text.
Five paragraphs with bold terms muscle fibers, rest and sleep, protein, heart, warming up and stretching, and a photo of a girl on a running track.
Four questions on facts in the text: about how many muscles are in the body, what the strands inside a muscle are called, which nutrient rebuilds muscle and why to warm up. The first three are multiple choice and the fourth has two lines.
Questions 5 and 6 ask why the author compares fibers to a rope and the body to a skilled repair crew, with a phrase to quote for the second. Question 7 is multiple choice on the heart, and question 8 is a true or false table with evidence lines.
One extended answer. A soccer player trains hard, eats a balanced diet and stretches but sleeps only five hours, and students decide from the text whether the muscles grow as strong as they could.
Letter answers for the multiple-choice items, sample responses for the written questions and the evidence for each true or false statement.
Annotate first
Have students underline the bold terms on a first read and say what each one means in their own words. The retrieve questions then go quickly.
Muscles grow at rest
Question 8 catches students who think muscles grow during the workout. If the table gets split answers, read the third paragraph together.
Evaluate in pairs
Let pairs argue question 9 before they write. The five-hour sleep detail sends them back to the third paragraph for their evidence.
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