Reasoning and Judgment

This higher-order reading comprehension worksheet helps students in Grades 4, 5, and 6 strengthen critical thinking, inferential reading, and decision-making analysis through a realistic school newspaper scenario. After reading about a struggling student-run paper, learners answer questions that require them to evaluate leadership choices, analyze motivations, and judge the effectiveness of decisions made by the editor and team. Rather than recalling facts, students must think deeply about cause and effect and support their conclusions with evidence from the text.

Learning Goals

• Critical Thinking & Reasoning (Grades 4-6): Evaluate decisions and outcomes using logical, text-based reasoning.
• Drawing Inferences & Conclusions: Interpret character motivations and implied consequences.
• Analyzing Cause and Effect: Explain how specific choices led to changes in the newspaper’s success.
• Evaluating Character Actions: Judge leadership and teamwork decisions using evidence from the passage.

Instructional Benefits

• Teacher-Created Resource: Designed by educators to align with upper elementary ELA comprehension standards.
• Focus on Higher-Order Thinking: Moves beyond recall to evaluation, judgment, and reasoning.
• Evidence-Based Responses: Encourages students to justify opinions with details from the text.
• Flexible Classroom Use: Ideal for guided reading, discussion-based lessons, homework, or assessment.

This printable worksheet helps students become more thoughtful and analytical readers by practicing how to evaluate actions and decisions within a narrative. By reasoning through character choices and outcomes, learners strengthen inferential comprehension, judgment skills, and confidence in evidence-based thinking. Whether used in a classroom or homeschool setting, this resource provides meaningful practice with critical reasoning, narrative analysis, and higher-level reading comprehension.

This worksheet is part of our multiple choice reading passages worksheets collection.