Word Templates

A Christmas Carol Study Pack: 18 Free Printables for Word

Preview every page, choose colour or black and white and your paper size, then download your Word templates in one small ZIP file.

Made by a teacherA4 and US Letter76 Word documentsFree

Updated 13 November 2026 · By Patrick Elliott

Can’t find the template you need? Request a template and I’ll make it in Word, free.

Get new free printables first: follow Word Made Easy on Pinterest

This free A Christmas Carol study pack gives you 18 printables for Dickens’s novella: a one-page knowledge organiser, a reading question sheet for each of the five staves, ten character profiles, a one-page answer key and the complete text with 59 of the original illustrations, as editable Word documents on A4 and US Letter, each in colour and in black and white. I’m Patrick Elliott, a teacher and Inclusion Lead. I wrote every summary, question and model answer myself and checked each quotation against Dickens’s 1843 text, so students quote his words, not a paraphrase. The complete text comes from the Project Gutenberg transcription of the 1843 edition.

In this guide, you’ll find what is on each page, how to use the stave sheets and character profiles while you read, and how to get the most from the knowledge organiser.

What’s in the A Christmas Carol Study Pack

👉 The questions refer to staves, never to page numbers, so the pack works with any edition of the novella. If your class has no copies, the complete text is included, with line numbers for finding quotations. Students can type their answers into the Word files or write on the printed sheets.

What Is a Knowledge Organiser for A Christmas Carol?

A knowledge organiser puts the facts a student needs about a text on one page: what happens in each stave, who the characters are, the Victorian context, the big themes and the quotations worth learning. It is a reference sheet to keep beside the book while reading, and a quick revision tool afterwards. A Christmas Carol is widely studied at KS3 and for GCSE English Literature in the UK, and as a December novel study in US Grades 6 to 8. This pack is my own and is not linked to any exam board. It covers Dickens’s novella, not the stage play Scrooge and Marley, which some US textbooks use instead.

What Is in the Study Pack?

• A cover page: John Leech’s coloured frontispiece from 1843, a line from the book, a list of everything in the pack with page counts, and lines for name, class and teacher.
• Knowledge organiser: the plot stave by stave with John Leech’s pictures, key terms, key characters, context, five themes and ten key quotations, on one page.
• Stave 1 to 5 reading questions: five vocabulary words in Dickens’s own sentences, then seven questions that move from recall to analysis, with a public domain illustration on every sheet.
• Ten character profiles: Scrooge, Marley, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim, Fred, Belle, Fezziwig and the three Spirits. Each has a picture, a short summary, two given key words to add to, four quotations to analyse (with a technique column), themes, Victorian context and Dickens’s purpose.
• The complete text: Dickens’s whole 1843 novella, about 50 pages, with 59 original illustrations wrapped into the text and line numbers every five lines, so students can find and quote evidence.
• Answer key: model answers to all 35 questions on one page. The last Stave 5 question asks whether Scrooge’s change is believable, so any view backed by evidence earns credit.
• UK and US versions: the A4 files use UK wording and the US Letter files use US wording.
• Original illustrations: pictures by John Leech (first edition, 1843), Sol Eytinge (1868), Fred Barnard (1878), A. I. Keller (1914) and Arthur Rackham (1915), all public domain and credited under each picture. The wreath in the title bar comes from the 1843 cover design.
• Black and white versions: every page also comes in a printer-friendly black and white version with grey headings, to save ink.

How to Use the Stave Question Sheets

1. Choose your paper size above, download the ZIP and print the knowledge organiser for every student.
2. Before reading each stave, look at the vocabulary words so students meet them in Dickens’s own sentences first.
3. Read the stave, then answer the questions in order: the early ones check what happened, the later ones ask why and how.
4. Ask students to find a short quotation for every question that asks for evidence.
5. Mark with the answer key, then go back to the knowledge organiser to link the stave to the themes and context.
6. As each character appears, fill in their profile, then add to it as the story goes on. The Scrooge profile asks how he changes from Stave I to Stave V.

For revision, cover one box on the knowledge organiser and ask students to rebuild it from memory, then check. Short, frequent recall like this works better than rereading. For more reading tasks, use the reading comprehension worksheets, and to teach the vocabulary in depth, try a Frayer model.

How to Print the Study Pack

Print at 100% (Actual size) on the same paper as the file, A4 or US Letter. The worksheet pages use narrow 8 mm margins to fit everything on one sheet, so if your printer cuts off an edge, choose Fit to page. The complete text is about 50 pages, so print it double-sided. The black and white versions print the pictures in greyscale, to save ink.

FAQs

Conclusion

This A Christmas Carol study pack gives students the full text, one page of key knowledge, a profile for every main character and a clear set of questions for every stave, ready to print or type into Word.

Choose your paper size above, download the ZIP, and for more reading practice, use the reading comprehension worksheets.

Related Tutorials

• Free Reading Comprehension Worksheets for Word
• Free Book Report Templates for Word
• Free Christmas Code Breaker Worksheets for Word