Free Argumentative Reading Passages

Argumentative reading passages help students understand how writers share a claim, give reasons and support ideas. PicoBuddy offers argumentative passages for elementary and middle school readers, with texts that can support reading comprehension, discussion, writing lessons and critical thinking.

Every PicoBuddy passage includes comprehension questions, an online quiz, a free PDF download and an editable Word download. You can print the PDF, assign the quiz online or edit the Word version when you want to adapt the text or questions for your students.

Argumentative passages are useful because they ask students to think about more than facts. Students can identify opinions, claims, reasons, evidence, examples and counterarguments. Younger readers may focus on simple opinions and reasons, while older students can work with stronger arguments, author’s purpose and text evidence.

These passages can be used for classroom lessons, homeschool reading, tutoring, homework, debate preparation or writing support. They also pair well with persuasive writing activities because students can see how a clear opinion is built.

For more nonfiction-style texts, browse our informational reading passages. When you need an argument about a specific topic, you can also create a custom reading passage with PicoBuddy.