Reading a Grade 4 Story is a free printable Grade 4 English worksheet on reading a whole Grade 4 text and answering across it, aligned to Common Core standard RL.4.10. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions that each ask 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 18 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

One paper per pupil

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. All 25 sets ask different questions.

Reading a Grade 4 Story

RL.4.10

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.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 three things are showing in the mud?
2. Summarise what happens across this poem.
3. Determine a theme of this poem and support it from the text.
4. How often does the sea go out?

2.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. Describe Nell in depth, drawing on specific details from the text.
2. Summarise this story.
3. How many times had the river been over the path that winter?
4. What does Dad's behaviour tell you about him?

LessonPrint · RL.4.10 · Set 18 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Reading a Grade 4 Story

Set 18. Prints on its own sheet.

1.1. Old anchors, a bicycle and a broken chain. 2. The tide goes out twice a day and grounds the boats, reveals the rubbish in the mud, then returns silently and lifts the harbour. 3. What is hidden is only briefly visible — "the whole forgotten underneath made briefly plain". 4. Twice a day.
2.1. She was confident and wrong — she told her father he was fussing — and now carries it: "Nobody said anything about the boxes." 2. Nell told her father the rising river was nothing, woke at two to find the house flooded, and sat on the landing till dawn with nobody mentioning it. 3. Twice. 4. He judged it right and acted early, moving boxes upstairs before it flooded, and afterwards said nothing about it.

More practice for RL.4.10

Read and understand Grade 4-5 stories, plays and poems by the year's end.

Teaching this next? Reading Grade 4 Literature is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

All Grade 4 worksheets

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.4.10 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.