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Patterns of Events is a free printable Grade 4 English worksheet on recognising a shared pattern across stories, aligned to Common Core standard RL.4.9. 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 14 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.

Patterns of Events

RL.4.9

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.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. How is Icarus like Arachne?
  2. 2. How is Daedalus's ending different from Athene's in the Arachne myth?
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. 1. How does a poem's structure differ from a story's?
  2. 2. What does this poem share with "Daedalus and Icarus"?

LessonPrint · RL.4.9 · Set 14 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Patterns of Events

Set 14. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Both push a gift too far without heeding a warning — Icarus climbs, Arachne challenges Athene. 2. Daedalus loses what he loves and stops; Athene has the power and uses it as a punishment.
  2. 2.1. A poem uses stanzas and line breaks; a story uses paragraphs of continuous sentences. 2. Both are about rising and falling — Icarus climbing, the tide going out — and both end after the fall.

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.4.9 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.