River Rescue

This meaningful informational reading worksheet helps students in Grades 4, 5, and 6 strengthen comprehension, critical thinking, and real-world awareness by exploring environmental issues through a relatable narrative. After reading about Lena’s community responding to river pollution, students connect the text to global environmental concerns and issues within their own communities, using evidence and reflection to deepen understanding of civic responsibility and environmental stewardship.

Learning Goals

• Text-to-World Connections (Grades 4-6): Connect environmental issues in the passage to real-world and global situations.
• Critical Thinking & Explanation: Explain problems, causes, and potential solutions using clear reasoning.
• Environmental Awareness: Understand how human actions impact ecosystems and community health.
• Problem-Solving & Civic Responsibility: Evaluate how individual and group actions can lead to positive change.

Instructional Benefits

• Teacher-Created Resource: Designed by educators to align with upper elementary ELA, science, and social studies standards.
• Cross-Curricular Integration: Combines reading comprehension with environmental science and civic education.
• Encourages Thoughtful Discussion: Promotes reflection on real-life issues that affect students’ communities.
• Flexible Classroom Use: Ideal for independent work, group discussion, homework, or assessment.

This printable worksheet helps students build stronger connections between informational text and the real world. By analyzing environmental challenges, proposing solutions, and reflecting on community action, learners develop deeper comprehension, critical thinking, and a sense of responsibility toward their environment. Whether used in a classroom or homeschool setting, this resource provides meaningful practice with text-to-world reasoning, environmental literacy, and thoughtful problem-solving.

This worksheet is part of our reading applications worksheets collection.