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Compare Two Characters is a free printable Grade 5 English worksheet on comparing characters using specific details, aligned to Common Core standard RL.5.3. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions, 22 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 11 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

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Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. 22 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.

Compare Two Characters

RL.5.3

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Mill: Ivy Sallow's Account

We knew by the thread. You cannot work a loom for twenty-two years and not notice when the good cotton stops coming. From about the March, it was the cheap stuff, and it broke. So we knew something. What we did not know was how long we had, and that is the part I mind. I could have been looking. My sister found work in Derby that spring and asked me twice. I said the mill would see me out. He stood on a crate on the Friday and told us. Somebody asked how long he had known. He said he would rather not say. That was the answer, really.

  1. 1. What does turning down her sister twice tell you about Ivy?
  2. 2. Compare Ivy's view of her own choices with her view of Whately's.
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

Pandora

The gods made Pandora and gave her, between them, everything: beauty, skill, a voice, curiosity. They also gave her a jar, and told her not to open it. They did not say what was in it. She kept it for a long time. The story is usually told as though she opened it immediately. She did not. When she did lift the lid, out came sickness, hunger, grief and every trouble that has since been ordinary. She got the lid back on with one thing still inside. That thing was hope. And people have argued for three thousand years about whether keeping it in was a mercy or the cruellest part of all.

  1. 1. What does "She kept it for a long time" add to her character?
  2. 2. Compare Pandora's gifts with what happens to her.

LessonPrint · RL.5.3 · Set 11 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Compare Two Characters

Set 11. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. That her loyalty to the mill cost her a real alternative. 2. She admits she could have been looking and turned down Derby; her complaint is not that he failed, but that he withheld the timing.
  2. 2.1. It makes her deliberate rather than impulsive, which is the opposite of the usual telling. 2. Curiosity is given to her by the same gods who then forbid her the one thing it would act on.

More practice for RL.5.3

Compare two characters or settings using specific details.

Teaching this next? Comparing Characters and Settings is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

All Grade 5 worksheets

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.5.3 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.