Text structure worksheets
Each click picks one of the 13 passages written for this grade. Every sheet comes with its answer key. You don't need to sign up.
Every information text has a shape: steps in time, two things compared, causes and effects, a problem and its fixes, or one thing described. Signal words give the shape away.
Five grades, three different sets of passages: 5th and 6th grade share one, and so do 7th and 8th grade. Print one here, or open a grade for examples and teaching notes.
Print by grade
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4th grade
Fourth grade text structure worksheets pair a passage written in one clear shape with questions asking how it is organized and which words signal it. The five shapes: steps in time, comparison, cause and effect, problem and solution, and description.
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5th grade Core grade
Each click picks one of the 13 passages written for this grade. Every sheet comes with its answer key. You don't need to sign up.
Fifth grade passages run longer, and the same content could have been organized differently, which is the point. Questions ask for the structure, its signals, and how the pieces connect: what caused what, which solution answers which problem.
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6th grade
Sixth grade questions turn to the author's choice: why this structure for this material, and how the structure shapes what a reader remembers. Recognizing the shape becomes a tool for taking notes and studying, which is its real job.
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7th grade
Seventh grade text structure worksheets use longer informational passages in engineering, medicine, economics, geography and ecology, often with section headings. Questions ask for the overall structure, then what each major section adds to the whole and how the order builds the central idea.
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8th grade
Eighth grade questions zoom in on a single paragraph and a single sentence: the role one line plays, how a sentence sharpens or limits a key idea, what a closing paragraph changes. The overall structure still matters, but the grade-8 standard asks for the detail inside it.
More on comprehension skills
- Author's claim 4th–6th
- Cause and effect 1st–6th
- Character traits 2nd–6th
- Characters and setting K–3rd
- Compare and contrast 1st–6th
- Firsthand and secondhand accounts 3rd–5th
- Genres 2nd–6th
- Making predictions 1st–3rd
- Picture sequencing Pre-K–2nd
- Plot 2nd–6th
- Poetry analysis 4th–8th
- Point of view 2nd–8th
- Problem and solution 1st–5th
- Sequencing 1st–3rd
- Summarizing 3rd–6th
- Text evidence 3rd–8th
- Text features 1st–5th
- Theme 2nd–8th
- Vocabulary in context 3rd–6th
All reading comprehension worksheets →
Or all English worksheets: every grade, every topic.