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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 24 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.

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. How is Arachne's fate different from Icarus's?
  2. 2. How is Arachne like Icarus?
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 24 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Patterns of Events

Set 24. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Icarus dies of his own mistake; Arachne is punished by somebody more powerful for being right. 2. Both have an extraordinary gift and both are warned, and neither takes the warning.
  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.