ReadTheory began when an English Teacher in North Carolina created his own differentiated reading comprehension worksheets to help boost students’ reading comprehension skills. Today, ReadTheory is known for our online platform, but we know that sometimes you still crave a physical, printed copy of a passage.
That’s why we offer free, printable reading comprehension worksheets designed to enhance students’ reading comprehension skills through engaging and challenging exercises. These sheets have corresponding detailed answers and explanations that will save you a few steps!
Worksheets by Grade:
1st Grade
Focused on recognizing the parts of a sentence, having phonological awareness, the ability to apply word analysis skills, and the ability to read with some measure of fluency and accuracy.
Lexile Level: 90, A Day at the Park
Lexile Level: 140, Birds, Birds, Birds
Lexile Level: 250, Balls for Sports
Lexile Level: 250, Karen’s Garden
Lexile Level: 310, Thank You Anna
2nd Grade
Focused on decoding one-syllable and two-syllable words, common prefixes and suffixes, and irregularly spelled words.
Lexile Level: 350, Amos Makes a Cake
Lexile Level: 350, Anna and Henry Play
Lexile Level: 350, David’s Hair
Lexile Level: 350, The Drive Home
Lexile Level: 350, Family Jobs
Lexile Level: 350, Three Boats
Lexile Level: 350, Time with My Family
Lexile Level: 450, Getting to Work
3rd Grade
Focused on the ability to understand the main idea of an informational text, retell key details, and explain the interrelationship between the two.
Lexile Level: 460, Car For Sale!
Lexile Level: 470, Where We Live
Lexile Level: 480, A Problem at the Fire Station
Lexile Level: 500, The New Law
Lexile Level: 540, Thinking First
Lexile Level: 570, Roller Coaster
Lexile Level: 580, Calm on Job
4th Grade
Focused on the understanding of the sounds letters make, syllabic patterns, prefixes, suffixes, and root words to accurately read unknown words, and informational text skills such as cause and effect, comparison, or chronology.
Lexile Level: 500, Selena’s Birthday
Lexile Level: 530, Cody Likes to Run
Lexile Level: 530, Managing Her Illness
Lexile Level: 530, My Favorite Color
Lexile Level: 610, Vacation Opinions
Lexile Level: 630, Working with Chocolate
Lexile Level: 640, Grocery Store Bags
Lexile Level: 700, Carpet Shopping
Lexile Level: 910, Dorado Alerts
5th Grade
Focused on the ability to explain how an author supports his or her main ideas with specific reasons or evidence, and having sufficient reading comprehension skills to read multiple sources on the same topic and summarize those sources.
Lexile Level: 600, Not a Small Problem
Lexile Level: 600, Vet Emergency!
Lexile Level: 700, Juniper City Trains
Lexile Level: 710, Something Special
Lexile Level: 790, Softwoods and Hardwoods
Lexile Level: 800, Candy Store
6th Grade
Focused on more complex readings as learners shift from beginner readers to more independent readers with an ever-growing skill set.
Lexile Level 770, The Rent Man
Lexile Level 780, The President’s Speech
Lexile Level 850, The Truth About Coupons
Lexile Level 860, Diligence and Perseverance
Lexile Level 890, Adult or Puppy
Lexile Level 920, Attention Residents
Lexile Level 920, Prayer Flags
7th Grade
Focused on recognizing how a literary piece can take creative license with actual historical events, thereby resulting in a compelling historical fiction novel, and analyzing how characters interact with one another, their environment, events, ideas, and more.
Lexile Level 880, All the Wonders
Lexile Level 890, Considering Cockroaches
Lexile Level 910, Joey and the Field Guide
Lexile Level 910, Ultramarathons
Lexile Level 970, The American Crow
Lexile Level 980, A New Parking Garage
Lexile Level 1020, An Honorable Tradition
8th Grade
Focused on being able to identify how sentence structure is used to present a concept in a reading, and learning how lines of dialogue in a literary piece help create the story of the character.
Lexile Level 910, Flower Power
Lexile Level 920, Three Branches
Lexile Level 930, A Perfect Muffin
Lexile Level 940, Renovation Estimates
Lexile Level 1040, Grocery Store or Farmers Market
Lexile Level 1060, The Carnivorous Plant Exhibit
Lexile Level 1070, Allergic to Dogs
9th Grade
Focused on analyzing how the author’s word choices impact the tone of the reading., and differentiating between primary and secondary sources by examining things like the author’s point of view, the date the text was written, and the source of the information.
Lexile Level 980, The Best Seat
Lexile Level 990, Fixed on Lincoln
Lexile Level 1020, The Importance of Minerals
Lexile Level 1060, Dividing Oceans
Lexile Level 1070, Latin as a Second Language
Lexile Level 1090, Amazon Snakes!
Lexile Level 1110, Being Bullied
Lexile Level 1180, Taping and Bracing
Lexile Level 1210, Chores are Good
10th Grade
Focused on determining the central idea of the reading as well as analyzing how that idea evolves throughout the text, and being able to identify specific details in the text that aid in idea development and being able to objectively summarize the reading in one’s own words.
Lexile Level 1040, Female Coaches
Lexile Level 1050, Gluten Free Baking
Lexile Level 1120, Nursery Closing
Lexile Level 1180, The Economy
Lexile Level 1210, Public Health Announcement
Lexile Level 1220, Mercury in Fish
11th Grade
Focused on understanding varying kinds of technical texts, including those used in other disciplines like science, understanding how to paraphrase technical readings in simple, accurate language, and having the capacity for gleaning information from different types of mediums (i.e., lab reports, first-hand accounts, secondary sources) to answer a question or solve a problem.
Lexile Level 1120, Ursula Pugh
Lexile Level 1130, An Artful Dodger
Lexile Level 1130, Piet Mondrian
Lexile Level 1190, Before Band-Aids
Lexile Level 1200, Surviving on Blood
Lexile Level 1210, Human Execution: No Such Thing
Lexile Level 1230, Capital Punishment
Lexile Level 1260, Education Technology and Chainsaws
Lexile Level 1340, Protecting Lake Tanganyika
12th Grade
Focused on college and career readiness such as acquiring the skills needed to make inferences about informational texts, particularly where the text presents information that might lead to uncertain conclusions about its meaning, and the ability to critically analyze how characters develop over the course of a literary work.
Lexile Level 1270, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations
Lexile Level 1310, A Beetle in a Box
Lexile Level 1360, Biological Adaptation
Lexile Level 1360, The Psalms: Popular and Troubling
Lexile Level 1370, Antonio’s Revenge
Lexile Level 1400, Autism and Vaccines: No Link
Lexile Level 1480, Bovine Somatotropin
Lexile Level 1480, Food Deserts
Lexile Level 1490, The Scythians
Our skilled team of writers are all current or former teachers and bring a combined 100 years of education experience to every passage you find on our site, whether as a printable PDF or in the online platform’s database. We understand that group work, reinforcement activities, substitute lessons, and student absenteeism are just a few of the reasons that you may want to use printed passages, and we are here to support you with our wide range of reading comprehension worksheets.
We also highly recommend creating a free ReadTheory account today. Other than ecological reasons, having students practice reading comprehension online with automatic grading, simplifies tracking of progress, and our platform automatically adapts to the reading level of each specific student. Plus students love the gamification and it’s proven to increase motivation. No matter what your needs are, we’re here to assist by providing engaging reading comprehension passages for all of your students.
