Reading Comprehension Passage and Assessment: The Giants of Easter Island

Item description

Easter Island, first spotted by Dutch admiral Jakob Roggeveen in 1722 on Easter Day, remains one of the most mysterious places on the planet. The small 45-square mile island and its hundreds of carefully carved and mounted monolithic statues have created many questions and yielded few answers since their discovery. Who built them and why? What did they symbolize? And what happened to the society that carved them inside a dormant volcano and somehow dragged them across the island to the standing positions? This article attempts to explain and resolve a bit of the mystery behind the massive and world famous moai of Easter Island. This Common Core-aligned informational reading and assessment can be used in Grades 4-8 depending on your students’ ability levels and in a number of ways by teachers (teacher-directed study in class, close reading, independent practice, homework, test prep, etc). This is a high interest article that works equally well with either reluctant readers or in the regular classroom!
The printable includes:
1) An engaging, high-interest informational article of 900 words called “The Giants of Easter Island.” Flesch Kincaid Reading Level = 6.5
2) A set of 23 questions, from fill-in-the-blank to more challenging, written to align with these Common Core Informational Text Standards:
RI.4.1. Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
RI.4.5. Describe the overall structure (e.g., chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution) of events, ideas, concepts, or information in a text or part of a text.
RI.6.3. Analyze in detail how a key individual, event, or idea is introduced, illustrated, and elaborated in a text (e.g., through examples or anecdotes).
3) An additional crossword puzzle for your early finishers or to use as another form of assessment.
4) Answers to every question.