2nd Grade Reading Comprehension Worksheets: The Paper Boat Race
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Download PDF worksheetAnswer key (PDF)Worksheet + answer key (3 pages)
The worksheet is 2 pages (passage, then questions); the answer key is 1 page. Print at 100% / "Actual size" on US Letter paper. Free for personal and classroom use.
Skill: Reading a short story and answering questions about details and characters
Teaching tips and what to try next
Suited to second graders who read short chapters with some support and can retell a story in order. After reading, ask your child to tell the race in three steps (start, problem, ending) before answering, which helps with the question about how a problem was solved. Similar stories are Reading Comprehension: Soccer Saturday and Reading Comprehension: The Costume Swap.
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Reading Comprehension: The Costume Swap
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About this worksheet
This second-grade reading comprehension worksheet has an original short story about two friends, Ava and Sam, who fold paper boats and race them down a stream in the park after a big rain. The story is about 180 words long, in four short paragraphs, with simple dialogue that second graders can read on their own or with a little help.
The first page has the story, printed in a large, easy-to-read font. Five questions follow the story. Four are multiple choice and ask about key details: what the boats were made of, who helped fold them, what went wrong during the race, and how a problem was solved. The fifth question asks how one character felt at the end and how the reader knows, with lines for a written answer of one or two sentences. That question asks children to use clues from the story, not just find a single fact.
How to use it: have your child read the story once just for fun, then read it again before answering. For each multiple-choice question, ask your child to put a finger on the sentence in the story that proves the answer. If your child picks a wrong choice, go back to that part of the story together. For the written question, a good answer names the feeling and gives a reason from the text.
The answer key shows each correct choice with the sentence from the story that supports it, plus a sample answer for the written question. For another second-grade story, try our Reading Comprehension: Soccer Saturday worksheet.