Read · Find it · Answer
9th Grade Reading Comprehension Passages
Short passages with questions under each, written for Grade 9. Every question sends the reader back into the text, and every answer explains why.
Start here: 2 free passages
No account needed. Read, answer and earn stars on this device.
- Free Story About 450 words Night Shift Callie ties on her apron for her first Saturday night at the Lakeview Diner, and a veteran waitress gives her one rule to follow.
- Free Memoir About 600 words Two Ways of Seeing a River Mark Twain remembers a sunset on the Mississippi and asks what he gained, and what he lost, by learning to read the river as a pilot.
More passages
These come with a PlayOwl plan. Anyone can read how each one begins.
- With a plan Story About 600 words The Call of the Wild: Buck Meet Buck, a big, proud dog who rules a sunny California estate in 1897, far from the gold fields of the frozen North.
- With a plan Memoir About 550 words Frederick Douglass Learns to Read Forbidden to learn, Frederick Douglass tells how he found teachers anyway, and what reading led him to think about.
- With a plan Science About 500 words How GPS Knows Where You Are A blue dot on a phone's map looks simple. Behind it are satellites, extraordinarily precise clocks and some clever geometry.
- With a plan Play About 550 words All the World's a Stage In a forest camp, a gloomy courtier describes the seven ages of a human life, and then an old servant is carried in out of the cold.
- With a plan History About 550 words The Voyage of the Endurance In 1915, pack ice trapped and crushed Ernest Shackleton's ship near Antarctica, leaving 28 men stranded on the frozen sea.
- With a plan Science About 550 words The Science of a Curveball For years, some people insisted the curveball was a trick of the eye. Physics explains what spin and air really do to a pitch.
- With a plan Opinion About 550 words Should Homework Have Limits? A high school student argues that schools should cap nightly homework. Weigh the claims and the evidence, and watch for weak reasoning.
- With a plan Story About 550 words The Fence Line My father and our neighbor had not spoken in years. Then a March windstorm knocked a tree across the fence between their land.