Is Pluto a Planet? Reading Comprehension Worksheet

Reading a non-fiction text closely is a different skill from reading a story, because the facts arrive fast and the reader has to hold on to all of them at once. This Is Pluto a Planet? Reading Comprehension Worksheet gives your students a real science article to practice on, built around one of the most argued-about questions in astronomy. The passage explains how Pluto was found in 1930, how astronomers slowly discovered that it shares the Kuiper Belt with hundreds of other frozen worlds, and why a group of scientists wrote three brand-new rules for the word planet in 2006. Students meet a genuine scientific disagreement and learn that a definition is something people write, test, and sometimes argue over.

This 5th grade planets worksheet runs across four pages. The two-page passage comes first, so students read the whole article before they see a single question. Page three holds four multiple-choice questions and two written-response items, and the last page is a complete answer key for you. Use it as a guided close read, as independent seat work, or as a homework page that families can talk about together at the kitchen table. Because the questions pull from both passage pages, students cannot answer them by skimming the opening paragraph.

What’s Included

• 1 print-ready PDF worksheet
• Answer key
• A two-page non-fiction passage about Pluto, the Kuiper Belt, and the 2006 planet rules
• 4 multiple-choice questions covering main idea, cause and effect, vocabulary in context, and text detail
• 2 written-response questions that ask for evidence from the passage

There are three reasons this Is Pluto a Planet? Reading Comprehension Worksheet helps students grow. First, the passage is written at a fifth-grade reading level and measured against it, so students are stretched without being stranded. Second, every question is answerable from the text alone, which trains the habit of going back and hunting for proof instead of guessing from memory. Third, the two written-response items ask students to explain a rule and then defend a position with two details, which is exactly the kind of constructed response that state assessments use.

Teachers and parents can carry the topic further in a few easy ways. Hold a quick classroom vote on whether Pluto should count as a planet, then have students write one sentence defending their side using a fact from the passage. Ask students to rewrite the three planet rules in their own words and test another object against them. Build a hallway scale model where a strip of tape shows how much farther Pluto sits than Neptune. You can also pair the article with a short video and have students list every new fact the video adds.

Related Resources

• Remembering Your Planets Reading Comprehension Worksheet
• Outer Planets Worksheet
• Inner Planets Worksheet
• Planets Song (Animated Music Video)