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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 17 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.

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. 1. How is its ending different from "The Lost Ledger"?
  2. 2. How is this story like "The Lost Ledger"?
2.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. 1. How does this account differ in focus from Nell's?
  2. 2. What does this account give that Nell's cannot?

LessonPrint · RL.4.9 · Set 17 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Patterns of Events

Set 17. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. The village restores its fast clock deliberately; the daughter tears the ledger pages out and accepts the loss. 2. Both are about a small error — a fast clock, an unpaid ledger — that has become part of how the village works.
  2. 2.1. This gives times, totals and the warning system; Nell gives one night as she experienced it. 2. The whole street — fourteen households, the water height, the outcome for four families.

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