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Paraphrase What You Heard is a free printable Grade 4 English worksheet on putting part of a text into your own words, aligned to Common Core standard SL.4.2. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions that each ask different questions, so no two pupils in the class work from the same page. Print it from the browser or download it as a PDF — no account, no email.

Set 11 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

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Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. All 25 sets ask different questions.

Paraphrase What You Heard

SL.4.2

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.Read the text, then answer the questions.

How Penicillin Was Found

In 1928 Alexander Fleming went on holiday and left a stack of dishes on a bench. Each held a colony of bacteria. When he came back, one dish had a spot of mould on it. Around the mould was a clear ring where the bacteria had died. Fleming realised the mould was producing something that killed bacteria. He named it penicillin and published a paper. Almost nobody noticed. Ten years later, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain read that paper and tried to make penicillin in quantity. That turned out to be the hard part: it took two thousand litres of mould fluid to treat one patient. By 1944 the problem had been solved and penicillin was reaching soldiers in the field.

  1. 1. Summarise this text.
  2. 2. In what year did Fleming notice the mould?
  3. 3. Determine the main idea of this text and explain how key details support it.
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

Why Clocks Agree

Until the 1840s, every British town kept its own time, set by the sun. Noon in Bristol was about ten minutes after noon in London. That was no problem while the fastest thing on the road was a horse. The railways changed it. A timetable cannot work if every station measures noon differently, and trains sharing a track need to agree about when. So the railway companies imposed London time on their whole network. People called it railway time. Some towns kept two minute hands on the town clock for years, one local and one railway. In 1880 Parliament made a single time legal across the country. The sun had been overruled by the timetable.

  1. 1. Determine the main idea of this text and explain how key details support it.
  2. 2. When did Parliament make a single time legal?
  3. 3. What was the single time called before it became law?

LessonPrint · SL.4.2 · Set 11 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Paraphrase What You Heard

Set 11. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Fleming spotted mould killing bacteria in 1928 and published to no response; Florey and Chain solved the production problem, and by 1944 penicillin reached soldiers. 2. 1928. 3. Discovering penicillin was only the start — the details about Florey, Chain and two thousand litres show that making it usable was the real work.
  2. 2.1. The railways forced Britain onto one clock — supported by the ten-minute gap, the timetable problem and the 1880 law. 2. 1880. 3. Railway time.

More practice for SL.4.2

Put part of what you heard or saw into your own words.

Teaching this next? Paraphrasing What You Heard is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

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Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to SL.4.2 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.