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Main Ideas from What You Heard is a free printable Grade 3 English worksheet on pulling the main ideas out of something presented, aligned to Common Core standard SL.3.2. 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 15 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.

Main Ideas from What You Heard

SL.3.2

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.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. Summarise this text in one sentence.
  2. 2. How old was Louis Braille when he lost his sight?
  3. 3. What is the main idea of this text, and which details support it?
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

How a Canal Lock Works

A canal cannot run uphill. Where the land rises, engineers build a lock: a chamber with a gate at each end. A boat going uphill enters the lock through the lower gate. The gate closes behind it. Sluices in the upper gate are opened. Water flows in from the higher stretch of canal, and the boat rises with it. No pump is needed, because the water comes down by gravity. When the water inside matches the level above, the upper gate can be opened and the boat moves on. Going downhill, everything runs the other way: the water is let out, and the boat sinks with it.

  1. 1. What is the main idea of this text, and which details support it?
  2. 2. What is a lock?
  3. 3. Summarise this text in one sentence.

LessonPrint · SL.3.2 · Set 15 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Main Ideas from What You Heard

Set 15. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Blinded at three, Louis Braille took a soldier's dot code and spent three years simplifying it into a six-dot cell readable under one fingertip. 2. Three. 3. Braille invented a readable and writable system of six dots — supported by the failure of raised letters and the soldier's code.
  2. 2.1. A lock lifts a boat between two levels — supported by the gates, the sluices and gravity. 2. A chamber with a gate at each end, built where the land rises. 3. A canal lock is a chamber with two gates; letting water in by gravity raises a boat to the higher level, and letting it out lowers one.

More practice for SL.3.2

Pick out the main ideas and details from something you heard or saw.

Teaching this next? Getting the Main Ideas From Listening is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

All Grade 3 worksheets

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to SL.3.2 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.