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Words That Allude to Myth is a free printable Grade 4 English worksheet on meanings that point back to a mythological character, aligned to Common Core standard RL.4.4. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions, 23 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 6 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

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Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. 23 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.

Words That Allude to Myth

RL.4.4

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.Read the text, then answer the questions.

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. "The bus timetable was written around it" — is this literal?
  2. 2. "The clock that was wrong" — in what sense was it wrong, and in what sense was it right?
2.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. 1. "Like birds that have stopped landing" — what is being compared?
  2. 2. "The boats go dumb" — what does this mean?
  3. 3. "The sea walks out" — what kind of figurative language is this, and what does it mean?

LessonPrint · RL.4.4 · Set 6 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Words That Allude to Myth

Set 6. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Nearly. It means the timetable was designed to fit the fast clock. 2. Wrong against real time, right for the village, which had built everything on it.
  2. 2.1. The grounded boats are compared to birds caught mid-landing, sitting on the mud. 2. They stop making the noises they made aground, because they are afloat again. 3. The sea is described as a person walking away, meaning the tide goes out.

More practice for RL.4.4

Work out what words mean here, including ones that point back to myths.

Teaching this next? Allusions and Figurative Meaning is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

All Grade 4 worksheets

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.4.4 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.