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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 3 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.

Why Clocks Agree

Until the 1840s, every British town kept its own time, set by the sun. Noon in Bristol was about ten minutes after noon in London. That was no problem while the fastest thing on the road was a horse. The railways changed it. A timetable cannot work if every station measures noon differently, and trains sharing a track need to agree about when. So the railway companies imposed London time on their whole network. People called it railway time. Some towns kept two minute hands on the town clock for years, one local and one railway. In 1880 Parliament made a single time legal across the country. The sun had been overruled by the timetable.

  1. 1. Quote the sentence that explains why the railways forced the change.
  2. 2. What is the author's purpose, and how do you know?
  3. 3. The text says local time was no problem before the railways. What reason is given?
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

Lichen

A lichen is not one organism. It is a fungus and an alga living as one body. The fungus provides the structure and holds water. The alga photosynthesises and makes sugar. Separated, the fungus starves and the alga dries out. Because it needs no soil, a lichen can grow on bare rock, on gravestones and on the roofs of cars that have not moved for a decade. Lichens grow extremely slowly — some crustose species less than a millimetre a year. Scientists use that rate to date rock surfaces, a method called lichenometry. Lichens also absorb whatever is in the air. Where the air is dirty, they disappear, which makes them a living measure of pollution.

  1. 1. Quote the words that explain what each partner supplies.
  2. 2. The text says lichens are a living measure of pollution. What reason is given?
  3. 3. What is the author's purpose, and how do you know?

LessonPrint · SL.4.3 · Set 3 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — A Speaker's Reasons and Evidence

Set 3. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. "A timetable cannot work if every station measures noon differently, and trains sharing a track need to agree about when." 2. To explain why clocks agree — the text traces the cause from local time to national law. 3. The fastest thing on the road was a horse, so a ten-minute difference did not matter.
  2. 2.1. "The fungus provides the structure and holds water. The alga photosynthesises and makes sugar." 2. They absorb whatever is in the air, so they disappear where the air is dirty. 3. To explain what a lichen is and why it is useful to scientists — the last two paragraphs are both uses.

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.