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Following a Technical Explanation is a free printable Grade 3 English worksheet on holding a chain of causes together while reading, aligned to Common Core standard RI.3.10. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions that each ask 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.

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Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. All 25 sets ask different questions.

Following a Technical Explanation

RI.3.10

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Salmon's Return

A salmon hatches in a river, swims to the sea, and comes back years later to the river it was born in. It finds its way home by smell. Every river carries its own mixture of soil, rock and plants, and a young salmon learns that smell before it leaves. The return journey is upstream. The fish leap waterfalls, sometimes several metres high, and they do not eat once they enter fresh water. Because it is not feeding, a salmon uses up its own body on the climb. By the time it reaches the gravel where it hatched, it is thin and worn. There it lays its eggs. Most Atlantic salmon die soon afterwards.

  1. 1. Why does a young salmon need to learn the river's smell before it leaves?
  2. 2. Put these in order: it lays eggs, it swims to the sea, it hatches in gravel.
  3. 3. Explain the cause and effect between not eating and the salmon's condition.
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

Turning Milk into Cheese

Cheese begins as an accident that people learned to repeat. Milk is mostly water with fat and protein in it. To make cheese, the protein has to be separated out. A starter culture of bacteria is added first. The bacteria turn some of the milk sugar into acid, and the acid begins to make the protein clump together. Then rennet is added, which finishes the job. The milk splits into solid curds and watery whey. The whey is drained off. The curds are pressed, salted, and left to age. Time does the rest: a cheese aged for two years tastes nothing like the same cheese at two weeks.

  1. 1. Put these in order: the whey is drained, rennet is added, the curds are pressed.
  2. 2. Explain the cause and effect between the acid and the curds.
  3. 3. Why must the whey be drained off?

LessonPrint · RI.3.10 · Set 12 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Following a Technical Explanation

Set 12. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Because that memory is what it uses years later to find the same river again. 2. It hatches in gravel, it swims to the sea, it lays eggs. 3. Because it is not feeding, it uses up its own body, so it arrives thin and worn.
  2. 2.1. Rennet is added, the whey is drained, the curds are pressed. 2. The acid makes the protein clump together, and rennet finishes it, so the milk splits into curds and whey. 3. Because cheese is made from the solid curds, and the whey is the watery part left over.

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RI.3.10 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.