Looking for Free Explorers Worksheets & Activities?

You’ve come to the right place! We’ve put together an awesome resource to help you blend reading comprehension and Social Studies into the same lesson! It’s always good to take content across the curriculum, and this free reading comprehension passage and worksheet about famous historical figures are perfect to help you do that.

This teaching resource is a two-sided reading passage about famous explorers, including Christopher Columbus, Jessica Watson, Sir Edmund Hillary, and Sally Ride. Following the reading passage is a comprehension worksheet asking questions about an informational text.

Through this resource, students will practice and demonstrate the following reading comprehension standards

• identifying the author’s purpose for writing a text
• sequencing events in the timeline of a person’s life
• comparing and contrasting key figures in informational text

For your convenience, an answer key has been included with this resource.

Tips for Differentiation + Scaffolding 

In addition to independent student work time, use this worksheet as an activity for:

• Guided reading groups 
• Formative Assessment
• Lesson wrap-up
• Fast finishers 
• Homework assignment

To challenge students needing acceleration, have them extend their learning about the different explorers into an informational research paper or project using our Informational Text Planning Templates

Easily Download & Print

Use the dropdown icon on the Download button to choose between the Color PDF or Blackline PDF.

Additionally, you could project the worksheet onto a screen and work through the passage and questions as a whole-group reading comprehension lesson.

Don’t stop there! We’ve got more activities to shorten your lesson planning time: