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Similar Themes, Different Cultures is a free printable Grade 4 English worksheet on comparing how two texts treat one theme, 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 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 14 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

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

Similar Themes, Different Cultures

RL.4.9

NameDate

Read Text 1 and answer the question under it.

1.Read Text 1 and answer the question under it.

Text 1: The Clock That Was Wrong

The church clock in our village had been four minutes fast for thirty years. Everybody knew. The bus timetable was written around it. Weddings started on it. My grandmother set her oven by it, four minutes back. Then the council paid a specialist to come and correct it. He was there two days. When he left, the clock was exact. Within a month, three people had missed the bus, the choir arrived late twice, and my grandmother burned a cake she had made two hundred times. The vicar wrote to the council. In March they set it four minutes fast again.

  1. 1. Who was paid to correct it?
2.Now read Text 2 and answer these questions about BOTH texts.

Text 2: 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 its ending different from "The Lost Ledger"?
  2. 2. How is this story like "The Clock That Was Wrong"?
  3. 3. How is the daughter's decision different from the council's?

LessonPrint · RL.4.9 · Set 14 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Similar Themes, Different Cultures

Set 14. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. A specialist, paid by the council.
  2. 2.1. The village restores its fast clock deliberately; the daughter tears the ledger pages out and accepts the loss. 2. Both are about an old arrangement that no longer works and what it costs to change it. 3. She ends the old system quietly; the council corrects the clock publicly and has to undo it.

More practice for RL.4.9

Compare how different cultures handle the same theme or story pattern.

Teaching this next? Patterns of Events Across Cultures is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

All Grade 4 worksheets

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