English · Comprehension: Sequencing
Story Sequencer
These four moments from the school trip are jumbled. Drag them into the order they happened, or tap two cards to swap them.
Free to use and free to share. There is no sign-up, no score, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere. What you may do with it, in full.
Loading the interactive exercise. Nothing you do here is saved or scored.
Why this works
Sequencing questions are won by hunting for time connectives rather than by re-reading the story. Words such as "at first", "later", "after lunch", "meanwhile" and "finally" are signposts the writer has left for you, and they usually settle the order on their own. Here "At first" and "Finally" fix the two ends immediately, and "Later that morning" must come before "After lunch" because morning comes before the afternoon. When two beats carry no time words, fall back on cause and effect: Priya can only find the fossil after the class has arrived at the museum, because she cannot search a place she has not reached yet.
Helping a child through Story Sequencer
Hints, least revealing first
- Read the opening words of every card. Most of them tell you when the moment happened.
- Sort the obvious ends first: one card says "At first" and one says "Finally". Lock those in place.
- For the middle two, think about the day itself. Morning comes before lunch, so "Later that morning" comes before "After lunch".
When they finish it: “The whole day hangs together now.”
11+ skill this exercise practises
It has its own page, with a worked example on it.
All english 11+ skillsYou can reuse this. Here is exactly how far that goes
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Embed this exercise
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Story Sequencer practises one skill. English has 41 of them
A free diagnostic covers every english skill and the other three subjects, and comes back with a shortlist rather than a list.