Living on the Space Station: Grade 5 Reading Passage

About this worksheet

A fifth grade nonfiction passage about life on the International Space Station: 16 sunrises a day, floating meals, recycled water, daily exercise and experiments. A free printable 5th grade nonfiction passage (223 words) with multiple-choice how/why/main idea questions, a vocabulary match and a short written answer. Answer key on page 2. Fifth graders can use it to practice main idea, vocabulary in context and answers supported by the text.

On this sheet

About 250 miles above Earth, a spacecraft the size of a football field races around the planet at roughly 17,500 miles per hour. It is the International Space Station, or ISS, and people have lived on board without a break since November 2000. Astronauts from the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and Europe take turns living there, usually for about six months at a time. Because the station circles Earth about every 90 minutes, the crew sees around 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets every day.

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.