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Two Texts in One Genre is a free printable Grade 5 English worksheet on comparing how two texts of a kind treat a 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, 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 21 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.

Two Texts in One Genre

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. 1. How is this poem like "What We Kept"?
  2. 2. How does its scale differ from "What We Kept"?
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. How is Pandora like Orpheus?
  2. 2. How does this myth's ending differ from the Orpheus myth's?

LessonPrint · RL.5.9 · Set 21 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Two Texts in One Genre

Set 21. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Both are about what survives when the thing it belonged to is gone. 2. This is a village over centuries; that is one family over ten years.
  2. 2.1. Both are given one prohibition without being given what they would need to keep it. 2. Orpheus ends in loss; Pandora ends in a question nobody has settled.

More practice for RL.5.9

Compare two stories in one genre on how they treat a theme.

Teaching this next? Comparing Stories in the Same Genre is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

All Grade 5 worksheets

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.5.9 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.