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

How Braille Was Invented

Louis Braille was blinded in an accident at the age of three. At his school, blind pupils read by tracing raised letters pressed into paper. It worked, slowly — a fingertip cannot take in a whole letter shape at once — and nobody could write that way at all. When Braille was twelve, a soldier visited the school with a code of raised dots that soldiers used to read messages in the dark. It was too complicated, but the idea of dots was right. Braille spent three years simplifying it. He settled on a cell of six dots, small enough to sit under one fingertip. He was fifteen when he finished. He was forty-three when he died, and the system was not widely accepted until after that.

  1. 1. Why did the size of the cell matter so much?
  2. 2. Explain the cause and effect between the soldier's visit and braille.
  3. 3. Put these in order: he settles on six dots, a soldier visits, he loses his sight.

LessonPrint · RI.3.10 · Set 4 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Following a Technical Explanation

Set 4. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. It hatches in gravel, it swims to the sea, it lays eggs. 2. Because that memory is what it uses years later to find the same river again. 3. Because it is not feeding, it uses up its own body, so it arrives thin and worn.
  2. 2.1. It had to sit under one fingertip so a whole character could be felt at once. 2. The soldier's dot code was too complicated, but it gave Braille the idea of dots, which he spent three years simplifying. 3. He loses his sight, a soldier visits, he settles on six dots.

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