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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 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. 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.

The Refusal

The rule was that everyone in Year Six performed at the leavers' assembly. Kemi told Mr Adeyemi she would not. Not could not — would not. He asked why. She said that if she explained, he would try to solve it, and it was not a problem to be solved. It was a decision. He could have made her. Instead he asked whether she would run the sound desk, which nobody had volunteered for and which meant she would be there for every rehearsal. She said yes. At the assembly she was at the back, in the dark, and every cue was perfect. Her mother asked afterwards why she had not been in it. Kemi said she had been.

  1. 1. Compare Kemi's position with Mr Adeyemi's response to it.
  2. 2. What does the sound desk offer tell you about Mr Adeyemi?

LessonPrint · RL.5.3 · Set 6 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Compare Two Characters

Set 6. 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. She insists it is a decision, not a difficulty; he accepts that framing and offers a role rather than an exemption. 2. He looked for a way she could take part on her own terms instead of enforcing the rule.

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.