Transcontinental Railway - Social Studies - Paired Texts - Fiction/Nonfiction

Reading Comprehension | Social Studies | Fiction/Nonfiction Pairing | Transcontinental Railway
Supports Best Practices in Reading by Pairing History-Based Nonfiction Stories with Fiction Stories on the Same Topic!
Each exciting and fact-filled story is accompanied by a dynamic, colorful, realistic illustration that brings the story to life and enhances the content. The nonfiction story gives a detailed, historic explanation of the topic. The matching fiction story makes the topic relatable to everyday life.

Reading Skills
Follow-up questions and activities help build important comprehension skills and strategies shared by and unique to nonfiction and fiction stories. By reading the stories and completing the accompanying activities, students will have a much greater understanding of these two key genres of reading.

“Transcontinental Railway”
The nonfiction story sets up the fiction story with historical facts about the difficulties, danger, and destruction, as well as the exciting advantages, that came along with connecting the East Coast with the West Coast of America by a transcontinental railroad.

“An Exciting Journey”
The fiction story tells about the beginning of a young man’s thrilling adventure into the unknown on the transcontinental railway.

Questions & Activities
Each story is followed by who, what, when, where, why, and how type questions.
Additional skill-specific questions for each story include: Main Idea, Locating Information, Fact or Opinion, Sequencing, Cause & Effect, Conclusion, Inference,
Summarizing, and Picture Interpretation.
Vocabulary activities include: vocabulary matching, word search, and context.

Details:
Each short story is about 340 words and is written at a 3.3 to 5.0 reading level according to the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Scale. The interest level is grades 4 and up.

Contents Include:
• 2 high-interest, illustrated, short stories
• 10 pages of questions and activities
• Glossary
• Answer Key
• 18 total pages