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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 8 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.

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 Nell's account give that this one cannot?
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Lost Ledger

Mr Kaur ran the shop on the corner for forty-one years and never used a till roll. He kept a ledger. Every debt in the village was in it, in pencil, and every settlement crossed out. Nobody ever asked to see it. Nobody ever queried it. When he retired he handed the ledger to his daughter, who was taking over. She found eleven debts outstanding, some six years old, totalling more than she took in a fortnight. She thought about it for a week. Then she went through the book, tore out those pages, and started a new one with a card machine on the counter. She never told him. He never asked.

  1. 1. How is this story like "The Clock That Was Wrong"?
  2. 2. How is the daughter's decision different from the council's?

LessonPrint · RL.4.9 · Set 8 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Patterns of Events

Set 8. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. This gives times, totals and the warning system; Nell gives one night as she experienced it. 2. What the night felt like — the floating slippers, the fridge going over, the silence about the boxes.
  2. 2.1. Both are about an old arrangement that no longer works and what it costs to change it. 2. She ends the old system quietly; the council corrects the clock publicly and has to undo it.

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