Reading Poetry Closely is a free printable Grade 4 English worksheet on reading a poem well enough to explain its structure and figures, 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 3 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.
Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. All 25 sets ask different questions.
Reading Poetry Closely
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. "The boats go dumb" — what does this mean?
2. "Like birds that have stopped landing" — what is being compared?
3. Determine a theme of this poem and support it from the text.
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.
The Quarry, Filled
Stanza one:
They took the hill away in carts
for ninety years, and then they stopped.
The hole they left filled up with rain
until the rain had reached the top.
Stanza two:
Now people swim where men once cut.
The water hides the ledge, the crane,
the drill-marks in the standing rock,
the tracks, the shed, the loading lane.
Stanza three:
The children diving off the edge
have never heard the word for it.
They call it "the lake". They are not wrong.
A thing becomes what people make of it.
1. Why have the children never heard the word for it?
2. "The water hides the ledge, the crane" — what does "hides" suggest?
3. Determine a theme of this poem and support it from the text.
LessonPrint · RL.4.10 · Set 3 · free to copy for classroom use
Answer key — Reading Poetry Closely
Set 3. Prints on its own sheet.
1.1. They stop making the noises they made aground, because they are afloat again. 2. The grounded boats are compared to birds caught mid-landing, sitting on the mud. 3. What is hidden is only briefly visible — "the whole forgotten underneath made briefly plain".
2.1. Because the quarry stopped working before they were born, so it has only ever been a lake to them. 2. That the workings are deliberately out of sight, as though the water were concealing them. 3. A place is what it is used for now — "A thing becomes what people make of it."
Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.4.10 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.