Worksheets and No Prep Teaching Resources Reading Comprehension Worksheets Volcanoes

Volcanoes and How They Form Volcanoes

---

Volcanoes and How They Form
Print Volcanoes and How They Form Reading Comprehension with Third Grade Work

Print Volcanoes and How They Form Reading Comprehension with Fourth Grade Work

Print Volcanoes and How They Form Reading Comprehension

Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 3 to 4
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	4.66

Vocabulary

challenging words:

basalt, fiftieth, origin, tends, volcanic, understand, granite, lower, outer, form, underground, light-colored, eruption, meets, molten, lava

Other Languages
     Spanish: Los volcanes y cómo se forman

---

Volcanoes and How They Form By Brenda B. Covert

---

¹     To understand how volcanoes form, you need to know about the layers within the Earth. The outer layer, the crust, has two parts. They are continental and oceanic. The continental crust is mostly granite, which is a light-colored rock with large crystals. This layer forms the continents. The oceanic crust is mostly basalt. Basalt is Earth's most common rock. It is a very hard, dark-colored rock that doesn't have any large crystals. The ocean floor is made up of mostly basalt. The Earth's crust is about 25 miles thick, on average, beneath the continents. Under the oceans the crust is, on average, about 4 miles thick.
 
²     Beneath the crust is the mantle. The deeper we go into the Earth, the hotter it gets. The mantle is where we find melted rock, called magma. No one has ever been there; they couldn't survive the heat!
 
³     Beneath the mantle is the Earth's core. Scientists believe that it is made up of mostly iron and some nickel, some molten (melted) and some solid. They believe that the innermost part of the core must be solid because it is under so much pressure. The weight of the Earth is pushing down on the inner core from every angle. The outer core is molten liquid. The core is even hotter than the magma in the mantle!

Paragraphs 4 to 6:
For the complete story with questions: click here for printable

---

Weekly Reading Books

Create Weekly Reading Books Prepare for an entire week at once!

---

Feedback on Volcanoes and How They Form

Leave your feedback on Volcanoes and How They Form   (use this link if you found an error in the story)

---

Volcanoes

Volcanoes

---

Science

Science

Careers in Science         Caring for Earth         Clouds         Dinosaurs         Earth's Land         Earth         Earthquakes         Electricity         Energy         Erosion         Food Pyramid         Food Webs and Food Chain         Forces and Motion         Fossils         Health and Nutrition         How Things Work         Landforms         Life Science         Light         Magnets         Matter

Moon         Natural Disasters         Photosynthesis         Plant and Animal Cells         Plants         Rocks and Minerals         Science Process Skills         Scientific Notation         Seasons         Simple Machines         Soil         Solar System         Sound         Space and Stars         Sun         Tsunami         Volcanoes         Water Cycle         Water         Weather

Copyright © 2025 edHelper