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Figurative Language in a Text is a free printable Grade 5 English worksheet on explaining a metaphor or simile as it is used here, aligned to Common Core standard RL.5.4. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions, 21 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 3 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

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Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. 21 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.

Figurative Language in a Text

RL.5.4

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.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. Explain what the last line, "Kemi said she had been", does to the story.
  2. 2. "At the back, in the dark" — what does this describe beyond the literal?
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Bell

Stanza one: The church has gone. They took the stone for walls and gateposts, load by load. Where the aisle was there is a field. Where the door was there is a road. Stanza two: The bell they could not sell or break. It hung in a barn for eighty years, green with the damp, out of the way, mute as a stone among the gears. Stanza three: Last spring they hung it in the school. It rings at nine and rings at three. The children do not know its age and ring it anyway, and it is free. Stanza four: So the building went, and the faith went, and the road runs where the door was cut, and still the sound the masons heard goes out at nine, and comes back, and stops.

  1. 1. "Mute as a stone among the gears" — what is being compared, and why does it work?
  2. 2. "The faith went" — what does this mean, and how is it different from "the building went"?

LessonPrint · RL.5.4 · Set 3 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Figurative Language in a Text

Set 3. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. It redefines being in the assembly, and closes the story by proving her original point. 2. Kemi's chosen kind of participation — at the sound desk, essential and unseen.
  2. 2.1. The silent bell is compared to a stone — and the church's own stone was carted away, which ties the images together. 2. The building went by demolition and the faith went by change of belief; the poem sets the two losses side by side.

More practice for RL.5.4

Work out what words mean here, including metaphors and similes.

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

All Grade 5 worksheets

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.5.4 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.