How This Text Is Built is a free printable Grade 4 English worksheet on describing the structure of a particular text, aligned to Common Core standard RI.4.5. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions, 17 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 1 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.
17 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.
How This Text Is Built
RI.4.5
NameDate
Read the text, then answer the questions.
1.Read the text, then answer the questions.
The Accidental Photograph
In 1895 Wilhelm Röntgen was working with a covered tube in a darkened room when he noticed a screen across the laboratory glowing.
Something was passing through the cover and crossing the room. He did not know what it was, so he called it X — the unknown.
He spent seven weeks alone in the laboratory testing it. He put wood, rubber and metal in the way. Metal stopped it; the rest did not.
Then he asked his wife to put her hand between the tube and a photographic plate. The picture showed the bones of her hand and her wedding ring.
Within a year, X-rays were being used in hospitals. Röntgen refused to patent them.
1. What overall structure does this text use?
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.
What a Beaver Dam Does
A beaver does not build a dam for shelter. It builds one to make a pond, and it lives in a lodge in the pond.
The dam raises the water so the lodge entrance stays underwater. A predator that cannot swim cannot get in.
But the pond does far more than protect one family. Behind a dam, water slows, and slow water drops the silt it carries. Over years this builds rich wet ground.
That ground holds water in a drought and holds it back in a flood. It supports plants, insects, amphibians and birds that were not there before.
Where beavers have been reintroduced, the number of species in a valley typically rises within five years.
1. What overall structure does this text use?
LessonPrint · RI.4.5 · Set 1 · free to copy for classroom use
Answer key — How This Text Is Built
Set 1. Prints on its own sheet.
1.1. Chronology, from the accidental glow to hospital use within a year.
2.1. Cause and effect, widening from the lodge to the valley.
Questions about How This Text Is Built
What does the How This Text Is Built worksheet cover?
It practises describing the structure of a particular text — 2 questions for Grade 4, all on Common Core RI.4.5: Name the structure a text uses: time order, comparison, cause or problem-solution. The instruction to pupils is “Read the text, then answer the questions”, and the answer key follows on the next sheet.
Which Common Core standard does How This Text Is Built practise?
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.4.5 — RI.4.5, in the Reading: Informational Text domain for Grade 4. The published standard reads: “Describe the overall structure (e.g., chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution) of events, ideas, concepts, or information in a text or part of a text.” The worksheet assesses that standard rather than a paraphrase of it.
What age or grade is this worksheet for?
How This Text Is Built is written for Grade 4, typically ages 9-10. It is one of the sheets on RI.4.5, so it suits any pupil working at that standard — including older pupils revisiting it and younger ones working ahead.
Does How This Text Is Built come with an answer key?
Yes. All 2 answers are generated from the same problems as the questions, so the key cannot drift out of step with the sheet. It starts on a fresh sheet of paper, after the questions, so it is not handed out with the class by accident.
How many different versions of How This Text Is Built can I print?
25 versions, of which 17 ask genuinely different questions — this skill does not have 25 distinct questions to give, so the rest reorder them and no two pupils still share a paper. Set 1 downloads all 25 as one PDF.
Is How This Text Is Built free to print and photocopy?
Yes. How This Text Is Built, its answer key and its 25 versions are free to print and photocopy for your own class, with no account, no email capture and no subscription at the download step. Please do not resell them or republish them as your own.
More practice for RI.4.5
Name the structure a text uses: time order, comparison, cause or problem-solution.