What Each Version Changes is a free printable Grade 2 English worksheet on finding where two related stories differ, aligned to Common Core standard RL.2.9. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions, 23 of them with different questions, so no two pupils in the class work from the same page. Print it from the browser or download it as a PDF — no account, no email.
Set 4 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.
Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. 23 of these 25 sets ask different questions — this skill does not have 25 questions to give. The rest reorder them, so no two pupils have the same paper in front of them.
What Each Version Changes
RL.2.9
NameDate
Read the story, then answer the questions.
1.Read the text, then answer the questions.
The Lion and the Mouse
A lion lay sleeping in the sun. A mouse ran across his paw and woke him.
The lion caught the mouse in one hand. "Please let me go," said the mouse. "One day I may help you."
The lion laughed. How could a mouse help a lion? But he opened his hand.
Weeks later the lion walked into a hunter's net. He roared and pulled, and the ropes only tightened.
The mouse heard him. She came at once and gnawed the ropes, one strand at a time, until the lion could step free.
1. How is the mouse different from the crow?
2. How is this fable like "The Crow and the Pitcher"?
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.
What the Tide Left
Every low tide, Grandad and Tess walked out to the rock pools.
Tess wanted to take a starfish home. Grandad said no. "It would die in a bucket," he said. "Look at it here instead."
Tess crouched for a long time. She saw the starfish move — slowly, on hundreds of tiny feet she had not known it had.
She did not ask again. On the way back she said, "It's better in the pool anyway."
1. How is this story different from "The New Boy"?
2. How is Tess like Iosif in "The New Boy"?
LessonPrint · RL.2.9 · Set 4 · free to copy for classroom use
Answer key — What Each Version Changes
Set 4. Prints on its own sheet.
1.1. The mouse helps somebody else; the crow solves a problem of her own. 2. In both, patience and small repeated actions win — pebble after pebble, and strand after strand of rope.
2.1. This one is about Tess leaving the starfish in the pool; that one is about Iosif joining in with the football. 2. Both change after watching — Tess watches the starfish move, and Iosif watches the football.
Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.2.9 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.