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A Speaker's Reasons and Evidence is a free printable Grade 4 English worksheet on identifying what supports a speaker's point, aligned to Common Core standard SL.4.3. 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 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. 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.

A Speaker's Reasons and Evidence

SL.4.3

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Longitude Problem

A ship's latitude — how far north or south it is — can be found from the height of the sun at noon. Sailors could do that for centuries. Longitude, how far east or west, was the problem. It has no natural marker. The solution was known in principle: compare the time on board with the time at a fixed place. The Earth turns fifteen degrees an hour, so every hour of difference is fifteen degrees of longitude. That required a clock that stayed accurate on a rolling, salty, temperature-swinging ship. No such clock existed. John Harrison, a carpenter, spent forty-three years building four. The fourth, finished in 1759, was the size of a large pocket watch and lost five seconds in eighty-one days at sea.

  1. 1. The text says no such clock existed. What reasons are given?
  2. 2. Quote the words that state why longitude was harder than latitude.
  3. 3. What is the author's purpose, and how do you know?
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

How Penicillin Was Found

In 1928 Alexander Fleming went on holiday and left a stack of dishes on a bench. Each held a colony of bacteria. When he came back, one dish had a spot of mould on it. Around the mould was a clear ring where the bacteria had died. Fleming realised the mould was producing something that killed bacteria. He named it penicillin and published a paper. Almost nobody noticed. Ten years later, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain read that paper and tried to make penicillin in quantity. That turned out to be the hard part: it took two thousand litres of mould fluid to treat one patient. By 1944 the problem had been solved and penicillin was reaching soldiers in the field.

  1. 1. Quote the sentence that explains why Fleming's discovery went nowhere at first.
  2. 2. What is the author's purpose, and how do you know?
  3. 3. The text says the hard part was not the discovery. What evidence supports that?

LessonPrint · SL.4.3 · Set 25 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — A Speaker's Reasons and Evidence

Set 25. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. A ship rolls, is salty, and swings in temperature — all of which upset a clock. 2. "It has no natural marker." 3. To explain why a solved-in-principle problem took so long — the obstacle is stated before the answer.
  2. 2.1. "He named it penicillin and published a paper. Almost nobody noticed." 2. To correct the idea that penicillin was one lucky accident — the second half is all about the work that followed. 3. It took ten years for anyone to act, and two thousand litres of fluid to treat one patient.

More practice for SL.4.3

Pick out a speaker's reasons and evidence for each point.

Teaching this next? A Speaker's Reasons and Evidence is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

All Grade 4 worksheets

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to SL.4.3 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.