Worksheets and No Prep Teaching Resources Reading Comprehension Worksheets World War I

Big Bertha World War I

---

Big Bertha
Print Big Bertha Reading Comprehension with Sixth Grade Work

Print Big Bertha Reading Comprehension


Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 6 to 8
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	6.43

Vocabulary

	challenging words:		monumental, arsenal, armed, mobile, artillery, gustav, heavily, explosive, highly, predicament, warning, design, army, shrapnel, general, power
	content words:		World War I., Gustav Krupp, Big Bertha, Big Berthas, By August

---

Big Bertha By Jane Runyon

---

¹     If you are a general in an army, you want to keep your soldiers alive. It is much harder to keep soldiers alive when they are fighting their enemy face to face. For hundreds of years, the answer to this predicament has been to damage the enemy from a safe distance away. This can be accomplished by shooting a heavy shell from a cannon. Ships were armed with cannons to fight enemies across distances on the water. Forts were armed with cannons to fight off advancing forces. Shells shot from cannons could cover great distances and do great damage to men and supplies.
 
²     Artillery weapons were used heavily in World War I. The British used 1,300 heavy guns. They fired a total of 1,730,000 shells from these guns in just one week. If you were to do the math, that would be over 10,000 shells every hour. The shells that were fired were highly explosive. Bits of metal, called shrapnel would explode in the trenches. People and supplies would be destroyed by being torn apart. Sometimes the only warning the soldiers had was the whistling the shell made as it pelted through the air at high speeds. Artillery guns were also used to propel canisters filled with poison gas. The Germans could deliver a deadly blow to the Allies by loading a cannon with canisters filled with the poisonous load and then sit back at a safe distance while the gas was delivered at a great distance away.

Paragraphs 3 to 4:
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 Big Bertha

Leave your feedback on Big Bertha   (use this link if you found an error in the story)

---

World War I

World War I

---

Social Studies

Social Studies

United States History and Theme Units         American Government         Ancient America         Ancient China         Ancient Egypt         Ancient Greece         Ancient India         Ancient Mesopotamia         Ancient Rome         Biographies         Canadian Theme Unit         Country Theme Units         Crime and Terrorism         Economics         European History: 1600s-1800s

Explorers         Famous Educators         Geography         Grades 2-3 Social Studies Wendy's World Series         History of Books and Writing         History of Mathematics         How Can I Help?         Inventors and Inventions         Middle Ages         Renaissance         World Religion         World War I         World War II         World Wonders

---

United States

United States

American Government         Black History and Blacks in U.S. History         Children in History         Government Careers         Hispanic Heritage         How Can I Help?

Immigration         National Parks and Monuments         Native Americans         Presidents of the United States         Women's History

---

United States History

A Nation Divided (1840-1861)         A New Nation (1776-1830)         After the Civil War (1865-1870)         American Revolution         Cold War (1947-1991)         Colonial America (1492-1776)         Lewis and Clark (1804-1806)         Pearl Harbor         Spanish American War (1898)         The 1890's         The 1900's         The 1910's         The 1920's         The 1930's

The 1940's         The 1950's         The 1960's         The 1970's         The 1980's         The 1990's         The 2000's         The Civil War (1861-1865)         The Great Depression (1929-1945)         The United States Grows (1865-1900)         The War of 1812         Wild, Wild West         World War I (1914-1918)         World War II

---

50 States

Fifty States Theme Unit

---

Document Based Activities

Document Based Activities

Copyright © 2025 edHelper