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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 21 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 Museum Key (a scene from a play)

SCENE TWO. The museum store room. Night. Boxes everywhere. A single desk lamp. PRIYA: (whispering) It was here on Tuesday. On this shelf. JON: You are sure it was this shelf? PRIYA: I dusted it. I am sure. JON: (lifting a lid) Then somebody moved it after Tuesday. PRIYA: Or before Tuesday, and I dusted the empty space. (Pause. JON puts the lid down slowly.) JON: That is worse. PRIYA: I know.

  1. 1. Describe Priya from what she says.
  2. 2. What happens after Priya suggests it went missing before Tuesday?
  3. 3. How does Jon respond to Priya's second idea?
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

Conker

First stanza: Inside the green and spiny case, packed in a lining soft as silk, it waits all summer in the dark and grows the colour of stained milk. Second stanza: Then autumn cracks the case in two. It falls. It hits the path and shines so hard and bright and newly made you cannot walk past it. Nobody can. Third stanza: By Sunday it is dull and cracked and lighter than it was before — a small brown stone inside a pocket, and no one wants it any more.

  1. 1. Put these in order: it hits the path, it waits in the dark, it goes dull.

LessonPrint · RL.3.3 · Set 21 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — How Actions Drive the Story

Set 21. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Careful and honest — Priya is sure she dusted it, then admits she may have dusted an empty shelf. 2. Jon pauses, puts the lid down slowly, and says that is worse. 3. He puts the lid down slowly and says it is worse — he sees what it would mean.
  2. 2.1. It waits in the dark, it hits the path, it goes dull.

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