4th grade multiple-meaning words worksheets

Fourth graders meet meanings that live in different worlds: a court for tennis and a court for a judge, a draft of an essay and a draft under the door. Choosing correctly is context-clue reading with the training wheels off, and it doubles as vocabulary growth.

Free printable PDF worksheet, aligned to Common Core L.4.4.a.

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The kind of sentences you'll get

Read each sentence. Circle the letter of the meaning the word has in that sentence.

  1. They grow beans on a plot behind the house. Here, “plot” means . a small piece of land · the events of a story

    Answer: a small piece of land

  2. The nurse read the scale in kilograms. Here, “scale” means . a thin plate on a fish · a tool for weighing
  3. A bolt of lightning split the sky. Here, “bolt” means . a flash of lightning · a metal fastener

Every print pulls a fresh set of sentences at this level, so a make-up test or a second sibling never gets the same sheet.

What's on each sheet

Every version prints on US Letter or A4, with its answer key on the last page.

How to teach this

Flip the exercise at the dinner table: give the word, ask for two sentences with two different meanings. Producing both is harder than picking one and locks the pair in. Dictionary side-trip: multiple meanings are numbered under one entry; show how deep bank or spring goes.

Watch for: Both answer choices are real meanings of the word; that's the point. The question is never which meaning exists, only which one this sentence uses. The clue is rarely the word itself and almost always its neighbors: cave and flew for the animal bat, swung and home run for the wooden one.

Common questions about multiple-meaning words

Both answers seem right to my child. What now?
That's the sign to hunt for the deciding word. Cover the choices and ask what's happening in the sentence: who is there, where are they, what are they doing? One meaning will stop making sense. The choices only look equal when the sentence hasn't been read closely.
Why do these words exist at all?
English recycles. Some pairs grew apart from one root (a river bank was once a ridge, like a bank of earth); others collided from different languages. Kids don't need the history, but "the word got reused" is a satisfying answer to why.

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Aligned to Common Core L.4.4.a. Reviewed by the One more sheet team. Content version 137, updated August 2026.

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