Reading a Grade 3 Story is a free printable Grade 3 English worksheet on reading a whole Grade 3 text and answering across it, aligned to Common Core standard RL.3.10. 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 11 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

One paper per pupil

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

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

Reading a Grade 3 Story

RL.3.10

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.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. What is the central message of this story?
2. How many letters were in the shoebox?
3. "The day she is really gone" — is his sister dead? What does he mean?
4. Where did he put the letters once they came back?

2.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. Where is this scene set?
2. What is this scene really about?
3. "I dusted the empty space" — what does Priya mean?
4. What is the only light in the room?

LessonPrint · RL.3.10 · Set 11 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Reading a Grade 3 Story

Set 11. Prints on its own sheet.

1.1. Keeping going matters, and somebody else may finish what you started — Ada found the address. 2. Ninety-two. 3. No. He means she would be gone from his life, which is different from being unreachable by post. 4. In a shoebox.
2.1. The museum store room, at night. 2. How much you can trust your own memory of something ordinary. 3. That the object may already have been gone, and she cleaned the shelf without noticing. 4. A single desk lamp.

More practice for RL.3.10

Read and understand harder Grade 2-3 stories, plays and poems on your own.

Teaching this next? Reading Grade 3 Literature is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

All Grade 3 worksheets

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.3.10 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.