The Mountain Trail — Passage

This reading passage titled "The Mountain Trail" provides 5th grade students with an excellent opportunity to practice quoting accurately from text when explaining explicit information and making inferences as required by CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.1. The narrative follows Sophia and her father hiking on a mountain trail as weather conditions deteriorate, forcing them to abandon their summit picnic plans. Students must identify specific textual evidence including the direct quote "The morning had started with clear blue skies, but now dark clouds swirled above the mountain peaks" to support their understanding of the changing weather situation. The passage requires students to make a deeper inference about the "distant rumble" mentioned in the final sentence, connecting this detail with other weather clues to conclude it refers to thunder. This passage effectively teaches students to use precise quotations when explaining both stated facts and reasonable inferences. The questions guide students to distinguish between directly quoted information and conclusions drawn by synthesizing multiple textual details. The outdoor adventure theme introduces relevant vocabulary while creating an engaging scenario with rising tension that naturally motivates students to analyze the text carefully for both explicit content and implicit meaning.