Grandpa's Weather Journal: Grade 5 Reading Passage

About this worksheet

Amara finds forty years of her grandfather's weather notes, spots a pattern he missed and turns it into a science fair project. A free printable 5th grade short story (213 words) with multiple-choice what/vocabulary/why questions and a short written answer. Answer key on page 2. It is aimed at fifth grade readers, around ages 10 to 11.

On this sheet

While helping clean out the garage, Amara found a stack of faded green notebooks tied with string. Every page was covered in her grandfather's neat handwriting: dates, temperatures, rainfall amounts and short notes like "First robin today" or "Lake frozen solid." "I kept a weather journal for forty years," Grandpa said, wiping dust off a cover. "Every morning at seven, I checked the thermometer and the rain gauge before breakfast." Amara flipped through the pages and noticed something. In the oldest notebooks, "Lake frozen solid" appeared almost every December.

Tips for using it

• Before reading, look at the picture and the title together and guess what the passage will be about.
• Ask your child to underline the sentence in the passage that proves each answer.
• Talk about the story afterwards: what was the problem, how was it solved, and what would your child have done?

Printing tips

Download the PDF and print at 100% (or “fit to page” on A4). Page 1 is the worksheet and page 2 is the answer key with the answers in red; print just page 1 if you want to keep the answers for checking. Free for personal, family and classroom use.