Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension Worksheets
Thanksgiving reading comprehension for 2nd and 3rd grade: 12 passages, 6 stories and 6 true ones, with 4 questions each. Answers included. Free PDF.
- Pages
- 14
- Ages
- 7-9
- Paper size
- A4 and US Letter
- Black ink only
Same worksheets, two paper sizes. Free to print at home, at school, and in a classroom of thirty.
12 passages written for this book (6 stories, 6 true passages), 3 tick-the-box questions and 1 written answer each, answers
This Thanksgiving reading comprehension book has 12 one-page passages for 2nd and 3rd grade, each followed by four questions. Six are short stories about a family Thanksgiving. The other six are true: the harvest feast of 1621, Squanto, turkeys, pumpkins, the Macy’s parade and how Thanksgiving became a national holiday. Every passage was written for this book and runs 70 to 95 words.
What is in the 14 pages
- 12 passage pages: the passage at the top, then three questions to answer by ticking a box and one to answer in writing.
- A drawing box under the questions where there is room, for a picture of the child’s favorite part.
- Answer key on the last page, passage by passage, for the grown-up.
The six true passages
Kids ask why we have Thanksgiving, and these pages answer it in words a 2nd grader can read. The Harvest Feast of 1621 tells how the Pilgrims came on the Mayflower, lost many people in the first winter and shared a three-day feast with about 90 Wampanoag men and their leader, Massasoit. That detail comes from a letter Edward Winslow wrote in December 1621, which is also where the five deer come from. A Day to Say Thanks explains why the date moves every year. Abraham Lincoln named a national day in 1863, and in 1941 Congress fixed it to the fourth Thursday of November, which in 2026 falls on November 26.
The other true pages are about Squanto teaching the Pilgrims to plant corn with small fish, wild turkeys (a baby turkey is a poult, and only the toms gobble), pumpkins (a fruit, and Illinois grows the most) and the parade that began in New York City in 1924.
The six stories
Grandma’s Pumpkin Pie, The Thankful Tree, The Kids’ Table, The Food Drive, The Long Drive and Ben Mashes the Potatoes. They follow ordinary things that happen in late November, like a class paper tree full of thank-you leaves or twelve guests and a table built for eight. The answer to every question is in the passage, so a child who is unsure can go back and find the line.
How to use it in class or at home
One passage a day across the two weeks before Thanksgiving covers the book. The written question is the one to talk about afterward, because it asks the child to find a reason or a detail rather than pick from three. Younger readers can do the stories first and save the true passages, which have more names and dates, for later.
For the math side of the holiday, see the Thanksgiving math worksheets. Children not yet ready for passages this long can start with the 1st grade reading comprehension worksheets.
Printing
Print at 100% scale. The book comes as an A4 PDF and a US Letter PDF with the same pages, in black ink only.
Printing this one correctly
In your printer dialog set Scale to 100% or Actual size, not Fit to page. Fit to page shrinks the tracing letters and they stop matching the size a child's hand is learning.
Plain paper is fine for crayons and pencils. If your child uses felt pens, 100 gsm paper stops the ink bleeding to the next sheet.
