Same Author, Same Characters is a free printable Grade 3 English worksheet on finding what two related stories share and change, aligned to Common Core standard RL.3.9. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions, 24 of them with 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 10 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.
Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. 24 of these 25 sets ask different questions — this skill does not have 25 questions to give. The rest reorder them, so no two pupils have the same paper in front of them.
Same Author, Same Characters
RL.3.9
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. What do this poem and the play scene share?
2. How is a poem different from the play scene?
2.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. How is this story like "The Last Letter"?
2. How does this story's ending differ from "The Last Letter"?
LessonPrint · RL.3.9 · Set 10 · free to copy for classroom use
Answer key — Same Author, Same Characters
Set 10. Prints on its own sheet.
1.1. Both are short and both build to a turn — the conker falling, Jon putting the lid down — and leave the reader to conclude. 2. A poem is in stanzas with rhythm and comparison; a scene is speech and stage directions.
2.1. Both are about an object — a violin, a shoebox of letters — that carries somebody's history. 2. This one closes the subject — Sylvie shuts the violin case; that one opens it up, and the letters are posted.
Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.3.9 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.