North Carolina Worksheet

This North Carolina worksheet gives your students an on-grade nonfiction passage about the Tar Heel State and four comprehension questions that send them back into the text for evidence. Learning the states is one of the first places elementary students practice pulling facts out of informational writing, and a single state makes that work concrete: the land, the plants and animals, the symbols, and the story of how the state began are all things a child can picture. This North Carolina worksheet keeps every answer inside the passage, so students are never asked to guess or to go looking somewhere else.

The passage walks from the Atlantic shore and the Outer Banks, across the rolling hills of the middle of the state, and up into the western mountains where Mount Mitchell stands. It names the cardinal as the state bird and the dogwood blossom as the state flower, explains how pine tar gave North Carolina its Tar Heel nickname, and closes with statehood in 1789, the capital city of Raleigh, and the first airplane flight at Kitty Hawk. Students then answer four fill-in-the-bubble questions and write a short constructed response that contrasts the eastern and western halves of the state. Print this 3rd grade states worksheet, hand it out, and let students read and answer independently, or read the passage aloud together first and let them answer in pairs. A complete answer key is included.

What’s Included

• A one-page nonfiction passage about North Carolina, written at a 3rd grade reading level
• Four multiple-choice comprehension questions with fill-in-the-bubble answers
• One short constructed-response question that asks students to compare two regions
• An original illustration of a cardinal on a flowering dogwood branch
• A complete answer key

Three Reasons This Helps Kids

• Every question is answerable from the text, so students practice finding evidence instead of recalling trivia they may never have met.
• The passage is measured on grade level, so the reading itself is challenging without being out of reach.
• The short response asks students to compare two parts of one state, which is early practice for the compare-and-contrast questions on state assessments.

Ideas for Teachers and Parents

• Pair this sheet with a blank United States map and have students shade North Carolina and label its three regions.
• Use the passage as a model and have students write a similar paragraph about your own state.
• Turn the short response into a class chart with an East column and a West column.
• Send it home as a homework page during a states unit, since students can complete it without an adult.

Related Resources

• Finding a State on a Map Worksheet
• United States Blank Map Worksheet
• State Dates Worksheet
• 50 States Song