Verse, Rhythm and Stanza is a free printable Grade 4 English worksheet on using the right terms about a poem, aligned to Common Core standard RL.4.5. 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 16 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.
Verse, Rhythm and Stanza
RL.4.5
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. How many stanzas are there, and what does each one cover?
2. How does the line length change in the third stanza, and what does that do?
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. How does the last stanza build on the first two?
2. How does the rhyme work across each stanza of this poem?
LessonPrint · RL.4.5 · Set 16 · free to copy for classroom use
Answer key — Verse, Rhythm and Stanza
Set 16. Prints on its own sheet.
1.1. Three — the tide going out, what is revealed, and the tide coming back. 2. The last stanza uses short sentences — "The bicycle goes under first." — which makes the tide's return feel quick.
2.1. The first two give the history; the last says it no longer matters to the people using it. 2. The second and fourth lines rhyme — "stopped" with "top", "crane" with "lane".
Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.4.5 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.