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How Actions Drive the Story is a free printable Grade 3 English worksheet on explaining how what a character does shapes the events, aligned to Common Core standard RL.3.3. 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.

Set 18 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

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

How Actions Drive the Story

RL.3.3

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Violin in the Loft

Nobody in our family plays anything. So the violin in the loft was a mystery for eleven years. Then Great-Aunt Sylvie came for Christmas and saw the case on the table. She went very quiet. "That was my brother's," she said. "He played in a café in Marseille before the war." She opened it. Three strings had gone, and the bridge lay loose in the bottom of the case. She did not play it. She held it under her chin for about ten seconds, put it back, and closed the lid. Then she asked for more potatoes and did not mention it again.

  1. 1. Describe Great-Aunt Sylvie from what she does rather than what she says.
  2. 2. What did Sylvie do between opening the case and closing the lid?
  3. 3. Why might Sylvie have put the violin back without playing it?
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Last Letter

Every Thursday for six years, Mr Ellis posted a letter to his sister in Canada. Then the letters started coming back. Address unknown. He kept writing them anyway. He put them in a shoebox instead of the postbox. When his neighbour Ada asked why, he said, "Because the day I stop writing is the day she is really gone." Ada went home and looked up the town on a map. It took her three weeks and eleven phone calls to find the new address. The shoebox held ninety-two letters. They posted them all on the same day.

  1. 1. What do Ada's actions tell you about her?
  2. 2. Describe Mr Ellis's motivation for writing letters he could not send.
  3. 3. What happened between the letters coming back and them all being posted?

LessonPrint · RL.3.3 · Set 18 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — How Actions Drive the Story

Set 18. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Private and reserved — she shows feeling by going quiet and holding the violin, then changes the subject. 2. She held the violin under her chin for about ten seconds. 3. The story does not say; the broken strings, or the memory of her brother, or both.
  2. 2.1. She is persistent and quietly kind — three weeks and eleven calls, without being asked. 2. Writing kept his sister present for him — stopping would have meant losing her. 3. Mr Ellis kept writing into a shoebox, and Ada spent three weeks finding the new address.

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.3.3 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.