Describe a Character in Depth is a free printable Grade 4 English worksheet on building a character description from specific details, aligned to Common Core standard RL.4.3. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions, 22 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 16 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

One paper per pupil

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. 22 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.

Describe a Character in Depth

RL.4.3

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Water Came Up (told by Nell)

I was the one who said it was nothing. The river had been over the path before. Twice that winter. Both times it went down by morning, so when Dad started moving the boxes upstairs I told him he was making a fuss. I went to bed. At two o'clock I woke because my slippers were floating. Everything after that is in pieces. Dad on the stairs with the cat. Water the colour of tea. The sound the fridge made when it went over. We sat on the landing until it got light. Nobody said anything about the boxes. That was worse than if they had.

1. Describe Nell in depth, drawing on specific details from the text.
2. What does Dad's behaviour tell you about him?

2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Clock That Was Wrong

The church clock in our village had been four minutes fast for thirty years. Everybody knew. The bus timetable was written around it. Weddings started on it. My grandmother set her oven by it, four minutes back. Then the council paid a specialist to come and correct it. He was there two days. When he left, the clock was exact. Within a month, three people had missed the bus, the choir arrived late twice, and my grandmother burned a cake she had made two hundred times. The vicar wrote to the council. In March they set it four minutes fast again.

1. What does the vicar's letter tell you about the village's view?
2. Describe the grandmother from the details given.

LessonPrint · RL.4.3 · Set 16 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Describe a Character in Depth

Set 16. Prints on its own sheet.

1.1. She was confident and wrong — she told her father he was fussing — and now carries it: "Nobody said anything about the boxes." 2. He judged it right and acted early, moving boxes upstairs before it flooded, and afterwards said nothing about it.
2.1. That the village wanted the old clock back, and was willing to say so officially. 2. Practised and precise — she set her oven four minutes back for years and had made the cake two hundred times.

More practice for RL.4.3

Describe a character or setting in depth, using specific lines from the text.

Teaching this next? Describing a Character in Depth is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

All Grade 4 worksheets

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