4th grade problem and solution worksheets

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Fourth grade passages run long and real: a lighthouse moved away from a hungry ocean, an island that redesigned its roads for migrating crabs. Your child untangles the problem, the constraints, the attempts, and the fix, the same structure science and history texts use constantly.

Free printable PDF worksheet, aligned to Common Core RI.4.5.

Each click picks one of the 13 passages written for this grade. Every sheet comes with its answer key. You don't need to sign up.

The kind of passages you'll get

Read the passage. Then circle the letter of the best answer for each question.

The Green Wall Across Africa

When people talk about planting trees, they usually mean dozens, or maybe hundreds. The countries along the southern edge of the Sahara needed to think far bigger than that. Across Africa's dry Sahel region, nation after nation watched good farmland turn to dust as droughts…

  1. What problem is the Great Green Wall meant to solve? farmland across the Sahel turning to dust as trees died · cities growing too quickly · rivers flooding the farmland · too many forests were blocking the farmers' fields

    Answer: farmland across the Sahel turning to dust as trees died

  2. Why did simply planting seedlings often fail? young trees died without care and local reasons to protect them · heavy rains kept washing every young seedling away down the slopes · animals ate every seedling · planting was against the law

Each print picks one of the 13 passages written for this grade, and its questions come with it. With 13 to pick from, a second print can land on one you've used, so check the title before you hand it out.

What's on a 4th grade sheet

4th grade sheets draw from 13 passages, 255 to 270 words long. All 13 are on 3rd grade sheets too, along with 13 more.

Some of the titles: The Orchestra With No Room, The Garden Nobody Watered, The Bridge for Crabs, Saving the Old Oak, The Bus That Runs on Sneakers, The Five O'Clock Cat.

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

How to teach this

Add the constraint question: what made this problem HARD? The bridge could not be raised; the alarm could not be quieter. Solutions look clever precisely because of what they had to work around, and a child who can name the constraint can usually explain the fix.

Watch for: The first fix a passage mentions is often the one that FAILED. Kids grab it because it comes first; the real solution is the one after which the problem stops. The problem is not the same as the topic. The topic might be a bird feeder; the problem is what kept going wrong at it.

Common questions about 4th grade problem and solution

What makes the fourth grade passages special?
They are structured like real nonfiction: problem, constraints, attempts, solution, result. Textbooks and news stories use the same skeleton, so this practice transfers directly.
What should my child be able to explain afterward?
The chain in their own words: the problem, why the easy fixes would not work, and why the real one did. If they can tell it at dinner, the sheet did its job.

Related worksheets

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Want a different passage? Print again. Each print picks one of the 13.

Aligned to Common Core RI.4.5. Reviewed by the One more sheet team. Content version 241, updated October 2026.

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