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8th Grade Reading Comprehension Passages
Short passages with questions under each, written for Grade 8. Every question sends the reader back into the text, and every answer explains why.
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- Free Story About 450 words The Substitute Nobody in eighth-grade math takes the quiet substitute seriously. Then a joke about the hardest problem on the board gets a surprising answer.
- Free History About 450 words The Underground Railroad It had no tracks, no trains and no timetable, yet it helped thousands of people reach freedom. What was the Underground Railroad?
More passages
These come with a PlayOwl plan. Anyone can read how each one begins.
- With a plan Story About 500 words A Retrieved Reformation A famous safecracker leaves prison and starts a quiet new life in a small Arkansas town. Then a child is trapped in a locked bank vault.
- With a plan Science About 450 words How the Brain Learns A new skill feels clumsy at first, then one day it feels easy. What changes inside your head, and what do practice and sleep have to do with it?
- With a plan History About 500 words Building the Brooklyn Bridge The Brooklyn Bridge took more than thirteen years to build, and its chief engineer could not visit the site for most of them. How did it get finished?
- With a plan Story About 500 words The Tournament Cory has reached the final of a table tennis tournament, and her opponent has not lost a game all day. But Cory does not know the whole story.
- With a plan Poem About 300 words If— A famous poem from 1910 that sets out, line after line, what it takes to grow up steady and strong. Read closely: what is the speaker really asking for?
- With a plan How-to About 500 words Is It True? How to Check a Source A dramatic photo is racing around the internet, and your finger is hovering over "share." Here are four quick steps to find out whether it is real.
- With a plan Opinion About 550 words Are Video Games Good for Your Brain? One headline says video games sharpen the mind; the next says they turn it to mush. This writer weighs the evidence on both sides and takes a stand.
- With a plan History About 550 words The First Transatlantic Cable In the 1850s, news crossed the Atlantic only as fast as a ship could sail. One man set out to join two continents with a wire laid across the ocean floor.