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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 22 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

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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.

Arachne

Arachne could weave. Shepherds left their flocks to watch her hands. She was asked once whether the goddess Athene had taught her. "Nobody taught me," she said. "Let Athene weave against me and we shall see who learned from whom." An old woman at the edge of the crowd advised her to take it back. Arachne laughed at her. The old woman straightened up and was Athene. They wove for a day. Athene's cloth showed the gods in glory. Arachne's showed the gods behaving badly, and it was — everyone could see it — the better work. Athene tore it to pieces. Then she touched Arachne's forehead and made her into a spider, so that she could go on weaving for ever and nobody would ever look.

  1. 1. Describe Arachne in depth, using specific details from the text.
  2. 2. What does Athene's response to losing tell you about her?
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

Daedalus and Icarus

Daedalus was the finest craftsman in the world, and King Minos kept him prisoner because of it. He and his son Icarus were shut in a tower above the sea. Daedalus watched the gulls for a summer. Then he gathered feathers, laid them in rows from short to long, and bound them with wax and thread into two pairs of wings. "Fly in the middle," he told Icarus. "Too low and the sea spray soaks the feathers. Too high and the sun softens the wax." They rose from the tower together. For a while Icarus followed exactly. Then the boy found that he could climb. He forgot the tower, the sea, the warning. He went up, and up, until the wax ran and the feathers came away one at a time and the sky let go of him. Daedalus flew on alone. He never made anything again.

  1. 1. Describe Icarus in depth, using specific details from the text.
  2. 2. What do Daedalus's actions after the fall tell you about him?

LessonPrint · RL.4.3 · Set 22 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Describe a Character in Depth

Set 22. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Supremely skilled and unwilling to defer — she claims nobody taught her, challenges a goddess, and laughs at a warning. 2. She cannot accept being beaten — she destroys the cloth and punishes the weaver rather than admitting it.
  2. 2.1. He begins obedient — "Icarus followed exactly" — then, discovering he can climb, forgets the tower, the sea and the warning. 2. "He never made anything again" — his skill was what cost him his son, and he gave it up.

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.