Nonfiction Reading Comprehension Bundle Part II: Includes a Bonus Passage

Nonfiction reading can be fascinating and fun yet still provide a rigorous academic experience for students! This bundle, with comprehension questions and academic vocabulary with a quiz and review, is correlated with the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts students in grades nine and ten. However, it is also appropriate for grades 11 and 12. It includes the following at a 20% discount off the price of purchasing each resource separately.

• The World's Most Extreme Environments: The Arctic and Antarctica
• Fat of Bear, Spiders and Midges: Magical Thinking Throughout History
• Dead Horse Trail
• The Caste System

Passage File Type: Zip (Non-Digital/ Requires Printing)

Passage One Contents: "The World's Most Extreme Environments"

• 4 page reading passage
• 12 vocabulary words (ex. homeostasis, hypothermia, indigenous, physiological) with review, quiz, and keys
• 25 questions, both objective and subjective

Topics, Subtopics, and Quotations

1. The Arctic
2. Antarctica
3. The Dangers of Extreme Cold
4. Quotations from Ernest Shackleton and Charles Darwin
5. Adapting to an Extreme Environment
6. Physiological and Behavioral Adaptations (Antarctic Blackfin Icefish, Walrus, Polar Bear)

Excerpts

Scientists refer to the Arctic as a circumpolar region. This term identifies an area near or around one of the earth’s poles. Unlike Antarctica, it has a population of four million citizens. Paleo-Eskimos, a primitive people from Russia’s northernmost land, Siberia, were its first inhabitants. Throughout the centuries, other native tribes arrived to eke a living from conditions that most of us would find unbearable. In the early nineteenth century, Europeans from the Scandinavian countries, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, set up outposts. 

Danger to overexposure, in both Antarctica and the Arctic, can prove life-threatening. Our internal organs, the stomach, heart, lungs, and liver, have fat, bone, and skin to protect them. Without this three-layered shield, the human body could not survive. These organs require a consistent temperature of around 98.6 °Fahrenheit. If the blood encircling them reaches 95 °Fahrenheit or below, severe bodily stress occurs, resulting in hypothermia. This condition, when left untreated, causes the heart and respiratory system to cease normal functioning. In extreme cases, death can occur..

Passage Two Contents: "Fat of Bear, Spiders and Midges, Magic Thinking Throughout History"

• 4 page reading passage
• 16 vocabulary words (ex. acrimonious, epitome, reiterate, trepidation) with review, quiz, and keys
• 8 reading comprehension question
• writing assignment: summarization (rubric included)

Topics and Subtopics

1. Conversing with Apollo in Ancient Greece
2. Conjuring the Dead in Biblical Times
3. Bewitching Times in Medieval Europe
4. Enchanted Visitations in the British Empire
5. Magical Thinking in the United States
6. Transylvania, a Breeding Ground for Vampires
7. Angering the Romanian Fortune Tellers
8. The Congenial Dunghill (How to find a husband in Romania)

Excerpt:

However, it is in the shadows of Romania’s Carpathian Mountains that one discovers the most interesting forms of magic. In the fourteenth century, Ottoman Turks invaded Romania. During that dark period, plagues of leprosy were common. This disease exacerbated the suffering resulting from the Turkish occupation. Also known as Hansen’s Disease, leprosy, with its disfigurement of the human body, ravaged the countryside. Centuries ago, people so feared this disease that a leper approaching another human rang a bell to warn of his or her approach. (Hilts, Carly).

Passage Three Contents: "Dead Horse Trail: A True Story from the Klondike Gold Rush"

• 3 1/2 page reading passage
• 10 vocabulary words (ex. emaciated, precipice, perpetual, inebriate) with review, quiz, and keys
• 7 comprehension questions

Topics and Subtopics

1. Discovering Gold in Juneau
2. Hard Rock and Placer Mining
3. North to Alaska (gold discovered in Yukon Territory)
4. Gold Fever
5. The Dangers of Extreme Cold
6. An Alaskan Winter
7. Chilkoot Pass
8. White Pass
9. Entering Yukon Territory

Excerpts

The strike on Gold Creek was one of many, for hidden beneath Alaska’s towering, snow-capped peaks were mother lodes, veins of solid gold embedded between layers of bedrock. Eons of movement in the underbelly of Alaska created these deposits when Earth’s tectonic plates collided. This impact gave birth to the Brooks, Alaskan, and Aleutian Mountain Ranges.

Experts explain how our bodies respond to unforgiving climates such as the Klondike prospectors faced. Our internal organs function at their maximum when the core temperature surrounding them is around 98.6 °F. When that temperature drops below 95 °F, hypothermia, or low body temperature, occurs. At that point, our organs will cease to function with normalcy.

Passage Four Contents: "The Caste System"

• 2 1/2 page reading passage
• 12 reading comprehension questions, both objective and subjective

Topics and Subtopics

1. Determining One's Caste
2. The Brahmin Caste
3. The Kshatriya Caste
4. The Vaishya Caste
5. The Sudra Caste
6. The Dalits
7. Combatting India's Caste System

Excerpts

Acknowledging this necessity, India’s rulers organized laborers into occupational guilds called varnas or castes. One’s temperament and skills determined vocational placement. This division of labor ensured that all members of the community were engaged. Each essential task, no matter how difficult or repugnant, had employees assigned to complete it. Since duties were based on skills, competition among workers rarely occurred. To a large extent, society functioned in an orderly manner. 

Throughout its history, this hierarchal system has created a massive pool of cheap laborers. Existing at the lower level of this pyramid are the Sudras and Dalits. These people are compelled to follow the occupations of their parents. They are offered little opportunity for upward mobility, and rigid social barriers prohibit their marriage outside their class.

Thank you for allowing Our World, One Story at a Time to assist in meeting your students' needs. Here are some other resources your class might enjoy.

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