Determine a Theme is a free printable Grade 4 English worksheet on working a theme out from details rather than being told it, aligned to Common Core standard RL.4.2. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions, 19 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.

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. 19 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.

Determine a Theme

RL.4.2

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.Read the text, then answer the questions.

Mill Lane, February

The houses on Mill Lane were built in 1840, close to the water because the mill was the work. On the night of the flood, eleven of the fourteen households had moved possessions upstairs by midnight. Three had not. The water rose fastest between one and three in the morning. It reached a metre in the lowest houses. By dawn the fire service had brought everyone out. Nobody was hurt. Four families were out of their homes until August. At the meeting afterwards, the argument was not about the river. It was about why the warning, which had been issued at six that evening, had reached some doors and not others.

1. What is this account most concerned with?

2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

Low Water

Stanza one: Twice a day the sea walks out and leaves the harbour standing, the boats set down on their own keels like birds that have stopped landing. Stanza two: The mud shines. Old anchors show, a bicycle, a broken chain, the whole forgotten underneath made briefly plain. Stanza three: Then, without a sound at all, it turns and starts to come. The bicycle goes under first. The harbour lifts. The boats go dumb.

1. Determine a theme of this poem and support it from the text.

LessonPrint · RL.4.2 · Set 22 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Determine a Theme

Set 22. Prints on its own sheet.

1.1. Whether the warning system worked, not the flood itself.
2.1. What is hidden is only briefly visible — "the whole forgotten underneath made briefly plain".

More practice for RL.4.2

Work out the theme from the details, then summarise the text.

Teaching this next? Theme and How to Summarise is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

All Grade 4 worksheets

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.4.2 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.