Reading Comprehension: The Rooftop Garden
Home › 5th Grade › Reading & Writing
Skill: Reading an original short story and answering text-based questions
Download PDF worksheetAnswer key (PDF)
Free for personal and classroom use. Print at 100% / "Actual size" on US Letter paper.
About this worksheet
This fifth-grade reading comprehension worksheet features "The Rooftop Garden," an original short story about a class that turns a windy, gray school roof into a thriving garden. The passage is about 180 words long and is followed by four multiple-choice questions and one short written response. The story models problem-solving, teamwork, and persistence, and it gives students a satisfying change in the other characters by the end.
How to use it: have your student read the passage once all the way through for enjoyment, then reread it before answering the questions. Encourage them to go back to the text and underline the sentence that proves each answer. Quoting or pointing to evidence is a core skill in upper-elementary reading. The final question asks for the main idea in one or two sentences; a strong answer goes beyond listing events and explains what the story is mostly about.
The answer key gives the correct choice for each multiple-choice question, a quotation from the passage that supports it, and a sample answer for the main-idea question. Accept any written answer that captures the central idea with support from the story. This worksheet supports Common Core standards RL.5.1 (quote accurately from a text when explaining what it says and when drawing inferences) and RL.5.2 (determine a theme or summarize the text).
Letter Tracing A-M: Uppercase and Lowercase
Sight Words: Trace and Fill In
Adding Decimals to the Hundredths