Tool Time

This worksheet helps students in Grades 4, 5, and 6 strengthen grammar accuracy, sentence meaning, and understanding of action relationships by focusing on the correct use of by and with. Learners complete each sentence by deciding whether the preposition refers to the doer of the action (by) or the tool or instrument used (with), using clear context clues from everyday scenarios.

Learning Goals

• Correct Use of Prepositions (Grades 4-6): Distinguish between by to show who performed an action and with to show what was used.
• Understanding Passive Voice Components: Recognize agents and instruments in passive-style sentence constructions.
• Sentence Completion with Context Clues: Use surrounding details to select the preposition that best fits the meaning.
• Grammar Accuracy: Apply rules consistently to produce clear, correct sentences.

Instructional Benefits

• Teacher-Created Resource: Designed by educators to align with upper elementary ELA grammar standards.
• Concrete, Visual Examples: Everyday actions like baking, painting, and fixing make abstract grammar concepts easier to grasp.
• Focused Skill Practice: Targets a commonly confused preposition pair in a clear, accessible format.
• Flexible Classroom Use: Ideal for grammar lessons, independent practice, review, homework, or small groups.
• Low-Prep Printable: Easy to use in both classroom and homeschool environments.

This printable worksheet helps students build confidence with by and with by clearly separating the ideas of who did the action and what was used to do it. By analyzing sentence context and making precise choices, learners strengthen grammar conventions, sentence clarity, and overall language understanding. Whether used in a classroom language arts block or a homeschool lesson, this resource supports careful reading, accurate word choice, and strong foundations in standard English grammar.

This worksheet is part of our by vs. with worksheets collection.