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 5 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.
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 Water Came Up (told by Nell)
I was the one who said it was nothing.
The river had been over the path before. Twice that winter. Both times it went down by morning, so when Dad started moving the boxes upstairs I told him he was making a fuss.
I went to bed. At two o'clock I woke because my slippers were floating.
Everything after that is in pieces. Dad on the stairs with the cat. Water the colour of tea. The sound the fridge made when it went over.
We sat on the landing until it got light. Nobody said anything about the boxes. That was worse than if they had.
1. How does this account of the flood differ from a report of it?
2. How is Nell 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. What does this poem share with "Daedalus and Icarus"?
2. How does a poem's structure differ from a story's?
LessonPrint · RL.4.9 · Set 5 · free to copy for classroom use
Answer key — Patterns of Events
Set 5. Prints on its own sheet.
1.1. It gives one person's feelings and gaps; a report would give the facts from outside. 2. Both ignore a caution from somebody older who turns out to have been right.
2.1. Both are about rising and falling — Icarus climbing, the tide going out — and both end after the fall. 2. A poem uses stanzas and line breaks; a story uses paragraphs of continuous sentences.
Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.4.9 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.