Author's Purpose
Grade 2 Reading Worksheet
Read the text. Circle the best answer.
Read this first
Colors After the Rain
Have you ever seen a rainbow after a rain shower? A rainbow forms when sunlight shines through tiny drops of water in the air. To see one, you need the sun behind you and the rain in front of you. Rainbows often appear in the late afternoon, when the sun is low.
Sunlight looks white, but it is really a mix of many colors. When light enters a raindrop, it bends. Each color bends a different amount, so the colors spread apart.
Next, the light hits the back of the raindrop. The back of the drop works like a tiny mirror. It bounces the colored light back toward the front. As the light leaves the drop, it bends again and the colors spread even more. Then the light travels to your eyes.
Millions of raindrops do this at the same time. Together, they make a giant curve of color across the sky. The colors always come in the same order. Red is on the top, and violet is on the bottom. Orange, yellow, green, and blue fill the space in between.
What question does the author answer in this text?
- How does a rainbow form?
- How do clouds make raindrops?
- Why does it rain in the spring?
Why did the author write "you need the sun behind you and the rain in front of you"?
- to tell readers where to stand to see a rainbow
- to explain how light bends inside a drop
- to tell readers when the next rain will start
Why did the author write this text?
- to tell a funny made-up story about a rainbow
- to get readers to go outside after it rains
- to teach readers how rainbows form
Why did the author include paragraph 3?
- to explain what color sunlight really is inside
- to tell the order of a rainbow's colors from top
- to explain how the light gets back out of the drop