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The Message and How It Is Carried is a free printable Grade 3 English worksheet on naming the message and the details that convey it, aligned to Common Core standard RL.3.2. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions, 20 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 14 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

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Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. 20 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.

The Message and How It Is Carried

RL.3.2

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. What is the central message of this story?
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. 1. What is this scene really about?

LessonPrint · RL.3.2 · Set 14 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — The Message and How It Is Carried

Set 14. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Keeping going matters, and somebody else may finish what you started — Ada found the address.
  2. 2.1. How much you can trust your own memory of something ordinary.

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