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📖 The Water Cycle and Our Planet

6th Grade reading comprehension · Science · Read the passage, then circle the best answer.

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Earth has about the same amount of water today as it did millions of years ago. That water keeps moving through a loop called the water cycle.

The sun heats water in oceans, lakes and rivers, turning some of it into water vapor in a process called evaporation. Plants also release water vapor through their leaves, which is called transpiration.

As the vapor rises and cools, it condenses into tiny droplets that form clouds. When the droplets join and grow heavy, they fall as precipitation: rain, snow, sleet or hail.

Some precipitation soaks into the ground as groundwater; the rest flows over land into rivers and back to the sea, where the cycle begins again.

Words to know: evaporation: when a liquid turns into a gas · precipitation: water that falls from clouds as rain, snow, sleet or hail

  1. What causes evaporation?
    1. Wind only
    2. The moon
    3. Heat from the sun
  2. What is transpiration?
    1. Ice melting
    2. Water vapor released by plants
    3. Rain falling on trees
  3. What happens right after water vapor cools?
    1. It freezes into hail immediately.
    2. It disappears.
    3. It condenses into droplets.
  4. Why does the passage call it a “cycle”?
    1. It happens once a year.
    2. The water keeps repeating the same loop.
    3. It has a beginning and a stop.
✂ Answer key: fold or cut along the line

1. C (detail)   2. B (vocabulary)   3. C (sequence)   4. B (vocabulary)

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