Inference in Literature: Name:

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Below are two passages from L. Frank Baum’s classic story “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” The first
passage is about Dorothy’s home in Kansas. The second refers to the road outside the Emerald City in
Oz.
Read both passages and answer the questions.
Passage A

W hen Dorothy stood in the doorway and

looked around, she could see nothing
but
was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of
the long blades until they were the same gray
color
the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been
nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the
that reached to the edge of the sky in all rains washed it away, and now the house was as
directions. The sun had baked the plowed land dull and gray as everything else.
into a gray mass,
with little cracks running through it. Even the
grass

1. What is the most common color of the area around Dorothy’s home?

2. Does this sound like a pleasant place?

Passage B

T
he road was smooth and well paved, now, and They passed by several of these houses during the
the country about was beautiful, so that the afternoon, and sometimes people came to the doors
travelers rejoiced in leaving the forest far behind, and looked at them as if they would like to ask
and with it the many dangers they had met in its questions; but no one came near them nor spoke to
gloomy shades. Once more they could see fences them because of the great Lion, of which they were
built beside the road; but these were painted very much afraid. The people were all dressed in
green, and when they came to a small house, in clothing of a lovely emerald-green color and wore
which a farmer evidently lived, that also was peaked hats like those of the Munchkins.
painted green.

3. What is the most common color of the surroundings in this passage?

4. Does this sound like a pleasant place?

5. What do you think the author is trying to say about the differences in these two place
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 Cross-Curricular Reading Comprehension Worksheets: E5-of 36

Active & Passive

Name:
Answer the following questions based on the

Transport reading passage. Don’t forget to go back to

the passage whenever necessary to find or
Cross-Curricular Focus: Life Science confirm your answers.

All living things are made up of tiny units called cells. The cells are 1) What is the covering around a cell called?
surrounded by a covering called a membrane. The membrane controls
what moves in and out of the cell.
Cells need many kinds of materials in order to thrive. They must have
water, oxygen, glucose (sugar), sodium, potassium and a variety of other 2) How are active and passive transport different?
minerals. The body has to have a delivery system to get these materials where
they need to go. In addition, every cell produces waste materials that it needs
to get rid of.
The body has to have a method of waste collection and disposal. Like a fleet
of trucks form a transport system to the pick up and deliver goods in the 3) What is osmosis?
world, the body has a transport system, too. There are two types of
transport: active transport, and passive transport.
Passive transport is easiest for the cells because they don’t need to use
any energy to make it happen. Diffusion is the simplest and most common
form of passive transport. During the diffusion process, tiny particles of the 4) What comparison is made to help the reader of this
materials that need passage better understand how materials are moved
to be delivered to the cells are spread through either a gas, like oxygen, or a throughout the body?
liquid, like water. Areas with high concentrations of the materials slowly
diffuse them to areas of low concentration of the materials. Osmosis is a
unique form of passive transport that allows water to pass through the cell
membrane but keeps most other materials out.
Active transport is used when the concentration of materials inside the
cell is high, and the cell needs to push materials in to areas of high 5) Name one type of cell that uses active transport.
concentration of the materials. Unfortunately, this kind of transport requires
the cell to work against the natural direction of diffusion. This causes the cell
use energy. One example of this is how nerve cells work. They pump sodium
out and pull potassium in. Although they must expend energy in this process,
doing so allows them to thrive.

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 Cross-Curricular Reading Comprehension Worksheets: E5-of 36

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Bartering for Basics have some form of money,
Cross-Curricular but Comprehension
Reading we don’t always haveE5-of
Worksheets: to use
36 it.
Cross-Curricular Focus: History/Social Science Name:
Answer the following questions based on the
Early Native American groups lived in different cultural regions. Their reading passage. Don’t forget to go back to the
environments had different resources. Each group specialized in making passage whenever necessary to find or confirm
particular products or developing certain skills, based on their resources. As your answers.
they perfected their techniques, something exciting began to happen. For the
first time in their tribes’ history, they had
surplus of materials. They had enough to meet their own needs with 1) What is the purpose of this passage?
some left over. The conditions were perfect for an economy to develop.
In an economy, goods, services and often money are organized into a
system to manage those resources.
Native American groups began to work with each other to simplify their 2) What was one advantage to bartering for the Native
work and share items they wanted or needed. They began to barter as they Americans?
began to nteract with each other. Bartering is trading goods or services
directly for other goods or services rather than using any form of money.
Having the ability to barter with other tribes meant that it was easier on all the
groups. No one group had to work as hard to make or find everything they
needed for survival. 3) What does it mean to specialize?
Native American tribes would often travel long distances for the
opportunity to trade with each other. In between trading times,
they would gather or create surplus products. They set things aside
especially for the purpose of bartering with other tribes at their trade 4) What is an economy?
meetings.
An additional benefit of trading between cultural regions was the ability
to enjoy products that were impossible to make with the resources in the
tribe’s home territory. Tribal members of the Desert Southwest region
5) Do you think that you would like to try bartering with
wanted tools fashioned from whalebone. There is no whalebone available in
the desert. However, they could get it from the tribes of the Pacific someone in the future? Why, or why
Northwest region, who had access to resources found on the beach or in the
sea.
Some people still use bartering today to get the something they need or
want. For example, you might offer to do the dishes for your brother if he will

Convection
take you to the movies. Especially in tough economic times, people return to

this age-old way of getting things that they need. We will probably always
Understanding the patterns of the wind can help you know what kind of
Currents
weather to expect.

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Cross-Curricular Focus: Earth Science Don’t forget Cross-Curricular
to go back to the Comprehension
Reading passage whenever
Worksheets: E5-of 36
necessary to find or confirm your answers.
You may not be able to see the wind, but you can see the effects of wind
on the things around you. You can feel it blowing across your face on a 1) What is the simple explanation for why air
chilly day. You can see the leaves blowing down the street and see the sail on moves?
the sailboat puff up when the wind catches it. So why does the air move? The
simple answer is that the sun heats Earth unevenly, causing different amounts
of air pressure in different areas.
The simple explanation does not really give you much of an idea about 2) What are convection currents?
what causes the wind to blow. You have to look a little deeper. Convection
currents are loops of moving air or water that transfer energy from one
location to another. When convection currents occur in the air, they cause
wind. 3) How do convection currents influence
Local winds, like mountain breezes and valley breezes, stay in a fairly the weather?
small area. Mountains absorb more heat during the day than the valleys do,
so warm air rises off the mountainside. The cooler air from the valley rushes
in to take its place. During the night, the mountains cool faster than the
valleys, so the whole process happens in reverse. A cool breeze blows down 4) How does wind occur near mountains in the
from the mountains daytime?
In areas that are near the ocean, sea breezes blow from the water toward
the land during the day and from the land to the water at night. During the
day, the land heats faster than the ocean. When the warm air rises over the
land, cool air rushes in from the ocean to take its place. Once the water 5) What is the difference between local winds and
finally warms up, it holds onto the warmth longer than the land. When the
global winds?
warm air rises off of the ocean, the cooler air from the land rushes out to
take its place over the ocean.
Global winds cover larger areas. Uneven heating of certain parts of the
planet results in planetary winds. These are long-lasting wind patterns that
circle the globe in predictable patterns. They curve to the right in the
Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere. Fast-
moving currents called jet streams blow up to 149 miles per hour in the
atmosphere surrounding Earth.
All of these wind patterns influence the weather. Winds blow clouds
from one area to another, and clouds carry precipitation.

Name:
Answer the following
Understanding questions
the patterns of thebased on the
wind can helpreading passage.
you know what kind of
weather to expect.

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 Cross-Curricular Reading

Understanding the patterns of the wind can help you know what kind of
weather to expect.

Copyright ©2012 K12Reader - http://www.k12reader.com