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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 25 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 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. 1. What is the central message of this story?
2.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. 1. What is this poem really about?

LessonPrint · RL.3.2 · Set 25 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — The Message and How It Is Carried

Set 25. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Some feelings are shown by what a person does not say — Sylvie held the violin and asked for potatoes.
  2. 2.1. How quickly a conker goes from something nobody can walk past to a dull stone in a pocket.

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