Informational Text Vocabulary Worksheet

This informational text vocabulary worksheet teaches students to work out what a new word means from the words around it. The passage is a short informational text about how a seed becomes a plant, and five of its words are the lesson: soil, sprout, roots, stem and shoot. Three of them are defined right in the sentence that introduces them, so students learn to notice a definition as they read. The other two are never defined at all, and students have to gather the meaning from the surrounding sentences, which is exactly what a reading test asks them to do.

The passage runs about 156 words at a second grade reading level, with an illustrated garden scene above it showing one plant at three stages of growth. The first paragraph follows a seed as it drinks water and explains what soil is. The second paragraph covers sprouting and the roots that spread out underground. The third follows the shoot as it grows into a tall stem, carries water to every leaf, and finally opens a bud. Page two holds four fill-in-the-bubble questions, one for each target word, plus a written response on a fifth word. Page three is the answer key.

What’s Included

• A one-page informational passage about how a seed grows, written for second grade
• An illustrated garden scene showing a shoot, a young plant and a flowering plant
• Four fill-in-the-bubble vocabulary questions drawn from all three paragraphs
• One written response asking students to name the evidence they used
• A full answer key on the final page

Three Reasons This Helps Kids

• Every meaning is findable in the text, so students practice citing evidence
• Two words are never defined, so students have to infer rather than copy
• The picture supports the words without giving any answer away

Teacher and Parent Ideas

Use this informational text vocabulary worksheet to open a plant unit, as the reading half of a science block, or as homework a parent can check against the key. Before reading, write the five words on the board and ask students to guess each meaning, then read to find out who was right. After reading, have students underline the sentence that told them what soil is and the two sentences that together explain what a stem does. A 2nd grade context clues worksheet like this one also works well beside a real planting activity, since the text gives students the words for what they are watching grow.

Related Resources

• Context Clues Worksheet
• Context Clues Identifying Word Meaning Worksheet
• Using Sentence Clues to Help Define Words Worksheet
• Context Clues Song