BROKEN
STORY
SENTENCE STRIP ACTIVITIES
470L – THE MORNING SALE
ANSWER KEY:
The correct order for sentence strip placement, from top-to-bottom, is: B, E, A, G, D, C, F.
BROKEN STORY
CAN YOU FIX IT?
On the next page, you'll find a short story that is in need of some
careful repair. It seems that several lines of this tale are missing.
Luckily, those absent sentences have been provided below. But,
they might not be in the correct order. Your challenge is to take
these brief strips of text and place them in the body of the story.
You can either cut them out and paste them in the right slots, or
simply rewrite them by hand. The choice is yours.
Zelda smiled. "We live in the forest," she said. "Pipes don't run all the way out here."
A
Nim held out a small wooden cup. Her mother poured water from the bucket.
B
"It's an alarm bird!" he bellowed. "It will wake Nim up each day at dawn with a tweet!"
C
"Here you go," chirped Dalton, as he emerged from the house. "Twenty pieces."
D
"Why can't we have running water like city people?" asked Nim. She took a drink.
E
Nim ran to inspect the red-feathered bird. Zelda mumbled, "Yeah, and wake me too."
F
A cart merchant was parked there. He sat atop a furry pig that pulled his traveling store.
G
Directions: Fix the broken story by correctly placing the sentence strips in the gaps below.
THE MORNING SALE
The morning air felt cold to Zelda and her young daughter, Nim.
They stood at the well outside their cottage in the forest. The two elves shivered a little.
While speaking to her child, Zelda gazed over her shoulder at the dirt path.
Zelda shouted to him from the distance. "What are you buying this time?"
Dalton giggled. He handed the sack of coins to the salesman and held up a cage.
Zelda shook her head at her spendthrift husband. She nudged Nim to look in his direction.
© Mason Education
Overview of BROKEN STORY:
Broken Story Sentence Strip Activities help your students gain reading comprehension skills by skimming through
a brief tale with missing segments of text and working with an assortment of provided sentence strips that are
used to fill those vacant spaces. Every sentence strip can only logically be placed within one empty space in order
for a cohesive story to be the end result. Because of this, Broken Story Sentence Strip Activities help to teach your
students the valuable reading comprehension skill of rereading for understanding and the concept plot sequencing.
Readability Level:
This free sample of Broken Story has a 470L level of readability. If you are unfamiliar with Lexile levels, here is a
readability conversion chart that shows approximately with which grade levels it is best used:
Grade Level
Lexile
Guided Reading
DRA
Reading Recovery
K
BR-100L
A-B
A, 1-3
A, B, 1-3
1
0L-300L
C-I
4-16
4-16
2
150L-450L
J-M
18-28
18-20
3
300L-650L
N-P
30-38
22-24
4
450L-800L
Q-S
40
26
5
550L-900L
T-V
40-50
28
6
650L-1000L
W-Y
N/A
30
7
700L-1050L
Z
N/A
32
8
800L-1100L
Z
N/A
34
As you can see, this free sample is best utilized with students in grades 3-4. However, depending on the ability of
your students, you can still use this text in higher/lower grades too. We always stress not putting too much weight
on readability levels. They are a great starting point for selecting text for your students. Yet, student interest level,
as well as a whole host of other factors, will determine whether or not the text is truly readable.
Common Core Alignment:
This story and assessment addresses multiple standards in the Reading Literature and Foundational Skills strands of
the Common Core State Standards for your grade level, including RF.4, RL.5, and RL.10. Yet, these materials may
apply to more of the standards. Please reference the standards directly for additional correlation.
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