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Take Brief Notes is a free printable Grade 3 English worksheet on recording facts from a source without copying it out, aligned to Common Core standard W.3.8. 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 10 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.

Take Brief Notes

W.3.8

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. How old was he when he finished the system?
  2. 2. How old was Louis Braille when he lost his sight?
  3. 3. How many dots are in a braille cell?
  4. 4. The author says raised letters worked slowly. What reason is given?
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

Morse Code

Morse code turns every letter into a pattern of short and long signals: dots and dashes. The commonest letters were given the shortest patterns. E is one dot. T is one dash. Q, which is rare, is dash-dash-dot-dash. Because of that choice, an average message is much shorter than it would be otherwise. A message can be sent as sound, as light, or as taps on a pipe. That is why it survived so long: it needs almost no equipment. Timing carries the meaning. A dash is three times as long as a dot. The gap between letters is three dots long, and between words, seven. SOS was chosen because it is easy to recognise: three dots, three dashes, three dots.

  1. 1. The author says Morse survived a long time. What reason is given?
  2. 2. How long is a dash compared with a dot?
  3. 3. How is this text organised?
  4. 4. What is the Morse pattern for E?

LessonPrint · W.3.8 · Set 10 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Take Brief Notes

Set 10. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Fifteen. 2. Three. 3. Six. 4. A fingertip cannot take in a whole letter shape at once.
  2. 2.1. It needs almost no equipment — it can be sent as sound, light or taps. 2. Three times as long. 3. By topic — what the code is, why it is efficient, how it is sent, and how timing works. 4. One dot.

More practice for W.3.8

Take brief notes from sources and sort them into given categories.

Teaching this next? Taking Notes and Sorting Evidence is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

All Grade 3 worksheets

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to W.3.8 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.