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Two Narrators, One Event is a free printable Grade 5 English worksheet on comparing what two narrators of one event describe, aligned to Common Core standard RL.5.6. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions that each ask 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 17 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

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Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. All 25 sets ask different questions.

Two Narrators, One Event

RL.5.6

NameDate

Read Text 1 and answer the question under it.

1.Read Text 1 and answer the question under it.

Text 1: Orpheus Looks Back

Orpheus played so well that rivers changed course to listen. When his wife Eurydice died, he went down to argue with the dead. He played to the ferryman, who took him free. He played to the three-headed dog, which lay down. He played to the king of the underworld, who wept, and who had never wept. The king gave one condition. Eurydice would follow him up, and he must not look back until both of them stood in the light. He climbed for a day. He could not hear her footsteps — the dead make none — and he had only the king's word. Ten paces from the daylight, he turned round. She was there. That was the last he saw of her.

  1. 1. Why could Orpheus not hear Eurydice behind him?
2.Now read Text 2 and answer these questions about BOTH texts.

Text 2: 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. How is Pandora like Orpheus?
  2. 2. How is Orpheus like Pandora?
  3. 3. How does this myth's ending differ from the Orpheus myth's?

LessonPrint · RL.5.6 · Set 17 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Two Narrators, One Event

Set 17. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. The dead make no footsteps.
  2. 2.1. Both are given one prohibition without being given what they would need to keep it. 2. Both are given one prohibition — do not look back, do not open the jar — and both break it. 3. Orpheus ends in loss; Pandora ends in a question nobody has settled.

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.5.6 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.