Skip to content
LessonPrint

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

Next setLesson plan

One paper per pupil

12345678910111213141516171819202122232425

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. 1. Where did he put the letters once they came back?
  2. 2. How often did Mr Ellis write to his sister?
  3. 3. Describe Mr Ellis's motivation for writing letters he could not send.
  4. 4. "The day she is really gone" — is his sister dead? What does he mean?
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Night the Lamp Went Out

Grace's father kept the lighthouse. On the worst night of the winter, the lamp went out. He was ill in bed. Grace was eleven. She carried the oil up ninety-seven steps in the dark, twice, because the can was too heavy to lift full. Her arms shook so much on the second trip that she had to sit down halfway. She trimmed the wick the way she had watched a hundred times. She struck the match on the fourth try. By the time the light swung out across the water, three ships had already turned back. Grace never knew whether she had been in time. She decided not to think about it.

  1. 1. Describe Grace's character. What traits do her actions show?
  2. 2. How do Grace's actions contribute to the sequence of events?
  3. 3. "The light swung out across the water" — can light swing? What does it mean?
  4. 4. What is the central message of this story?

LessonPrint · RL.3.10 · Set 7 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Reading a Grade 3 Story

Set 7. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. In a shoebox. 2. Every Thursday. 3. Writing kept his sister present for him — stopping would have meant losing her. 4. No. He means she would be gone from his life, which is different from being unreachable by post.
  2. 2.1. Determined and capable — she climbed ninety-seven steps twice while shaking, and finished the job. 2. Because she carried the oil and lit the lamp, the light swung out across the water again. 3. The beam turned, sweeping across the sea like something swinging. 4. Doing the job matters even when you never find out whether it was enough.

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.