Skip to content
LessonPrint

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

Next set

One paper per pupil

12345678910111213141516171819202122232425

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.

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.
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Wrong Bus

Halim was two stops past the school before he looked up. The bus was going the other way. He had got on at the same shelter, in the same rain, and never checked the number. His stomach dropped. He thought about crying and decided against it, because it would not help. He read the route map above the window. He worked out that the 41 came back the same way. He rang the bell, got off, crossed at the lights, and waited eleven minutes for the 41. He was twenty minutes late. Mrs Achebe asked what happened. "I got the wrong bus," said Halim, "and then I got the right one."

  1. 1. List what Halim did, in order, after he read the map.
  2. 2. How do Halim's actions contribute to the sequence of events?
  3. 3. Describe Halim's character from what he does.

LessonPrint · RL.3.3 · Set 24 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — How Actions Drive the Story

Set 24. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. It waits in the dark, it hits the path, it goes dull.
  2. 2.1. Rang the bell, got off, crossed at the lights, waited eleven minutes, caught the 41. 2. Because he read the map and worked out the 41, he got himself back rather than staying lost. 3. Level-headed — he decides crying will not help and works out the route instead.

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