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Theme from a Response to Challenge is a free printable Grade 5 English worksheet on finding the theme in how a character meets difficulty, aligned to Common Core standard RL.5.2. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions, 18 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 2 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

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One paper per pupil

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Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. 18 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.

Theme from a Response to Challenge

RL.5.2

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. Determine a theme of this account and support it with details.
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. Determine a theme of this myth and support it with details.

LessonPrint · RL.5.2 · Set 2 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Theme from a Response to Challenge

Set 2. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Being kept from information takes away the chance to act — she could have taken Derby if she had known how long she had.
  2. 2.1. You can be set up to fail — the gods gave her curiosity and then a forbidden jar.

More practice for RL.5.2

Find the theme through how characters respond, then summarise.

Teaching this next? Theme From How Characters Respond is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

All Grade 5 worksheets

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.5.2 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.