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What Each Account Gives is a free printable Grade 4 English worksheet on comparing the focus and information of two accounts, aligned to Common Core standard RI.4.6. 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 20 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.

What Each Account Gives

RI.4.6

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.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. 1. How does this account of the flood differ from a report of it?
  2. 2. How is Nell like Icarus?
  3. 3. This is told in the first person. What can Nell not tell us?
2.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. Is this written by somebody who was there? How can you tell?
  2. 2. How does this account differ in focus from Nell's?
  3. 3. What does this account give that Nell's cannot?

LessonPrint · RI.4.6 · Set 20 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — What Each Account Gives

Set 20. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. It gives one person's feelings and gaps; a report would give the facts from outside. 2. Both ignore a caution from somebody older who turns out to have been right. 3. What her father was thinking, or anything that happened while she was asleep.
  2. 2.1. No — it reports Mill Lane from outside, giving the fourteen households and the metre of water rather than any feelings. 2. This gives times, totals and the warning system; Nell gives one night as she experienced it. 3. The whole street — fourteen households, the water height, the outcome for four families.

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RI.4.6 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.