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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 6 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. What did Sylvie do between opening the case and closing the lid?
  2. 2. Describe Great-Aunt Sylvie from what she does rather than what she says.
  3. 3. Why might Sylvie have put the violin back without playing it?
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 6 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — How Actions Drive the Story

Set 6. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. She held the violin under her chin for about ten seconds. 2. Private and reserved — she shows feeling by going quiet and holding the violin, then changes the subject. 3. The story does not say; the broken strings, or the memory of her brother, or both.
  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.