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What the Illustration Adds is a free printable Grade 3 English worksheet on explaining how a picture creates mood or emphasis, aligned to Common Core standard RL.3.7. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions, 23 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 21 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

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One paper per pupil

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Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. 23 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.

What the Illustration Adds

RL.3.7

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 would an illustration of the key moment show, and what mood would it create?
2.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 would an illustration of the end show, and what mood would it create?

LessonPrint · RL.3.7 · Set 21 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — What the Illustration Adds

Set 21. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Sylvie holding the broken violin under her chin at the table — quiet and sad.
  2. 2.1. Mr Ellis and Ada posting a shoebox full of letters — hopeful, after a long wait.

More practice for RL.3.7

Explain what the illustrations add to the mood or the characters.

Teaching this next? What the Illustrations Contribute is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

All Grade 3 worksheets

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.3.7 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.