Same Theme, Different Handling is a free printable Grade 5 English worksheet on identifying what each of two texts does with a shared theme, aligned to Common Core standard RL.5.9. 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 8 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.
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.
Same Theme, Different Handling
RL.5.9
NameDate
Read the text, then answer the questions.
1.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. Determine a theme of this poem and support it with details.
2. How is this poem like "What We Kept"?
3. How does its scale differ from "What We Kept"?
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.
What We Kept
Stanza one:
We kept the table, which was too big,
and the clock, which had never gone,
and a tin of buttons nobody wanted,
and the habit of turning lights off.
Stanza two:
We gave away the good chairs.
We gave away the china, all of it.
We gave away the piano to a school
because none of us could play.
Stanza three:
Ten years on, I would not know the chairs
if I saw them in a window on a street.
But I turn the hall light off behind me
every single time, and think of her.
1. Determine a theme of this poem and support it with details.
2. How is this poem like "The Bell"?
3. How is its ending different from "The Bell"?
LessonPrint · RL.5.9 · Set 8 · free to copy for classroom use
Answer key — Same Theme, Different Handling
Set 8. Prints on its own sheet.
1.1. A thing can outlive its purpose and find another — the bell rings for a school that does not know its age. 2. Both are about what survives when the thing it belonged to is gone. 3. This is a village over centuries; that is one family over ten years.
2.1. What we inherit is not the objects — the chairs are forgotten and the light switch is not. 2. Both are about something small — a hall light habit, a bell — that outlasts the household or church it belonged to. 3. "What We Kept" ends with one person turning a hall light off; "The Bell" ends with a school ringing for a whole village.
Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.5.9 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.