From Clay to Keyboards: The Story of Writing: Reading Comprehension Worksheet (Grade 5)
Free printable Grade 5 reading comprehension worksheet: an original non-fiction passage, "From Clay to Keyboards: The Story of Writing", with 5 questions covering literal understanding, inference, vocabulary in context and main idea. Answer key included.
Reading Comprehension: From Clay to Keyboards: The Story of Writing
Read the passage carefully, then answer the questions in full sentences.
Before writing existed, knowledge could travel no further than a voice. Around 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, that changed. Record-keepers began pressing wedge-shaped marks into wet clay tablets , a system we call cuneiform. At first it recorded boring but vital things: sacks of grain, heads of cattle, debts owed.
Writing was invented separately in other places too. Egyptians carved hieroglyphs, the Chinese developed characters, and the Maya of Central America created their own script. Each system began with pictures that gradually became simpler and more abstract.
Two later inventions made writing available to almost everyone. The alphabet reduced thousands of symbols to a small set of letters that could spell any word. Then, around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg's printing press allowed thousands of identical copies to be made quickly and cheaply. Books, once treasures owned by the wealthy few, spread across the world , and with them, ideas.
Today you carry the whole story forward every time you type. The letters on your keyboard are distant descendants of marks first pressed into river clay fifty centuries ago.
- 1.What was cuneiform, and what was it first used for?
- 2.Name two other places where writing was invented separately.
- 3.How did the alphabet make writing easier to learn?
- 4.Why was the printing press so important?
- 5.What does the author mean by 'you carry the whole story forward every time you type'?