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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 22 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. How much mould fluid did it take to treat one patient?
  2. 2. What did he see around 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.

What a Coral Reef Is

A coral reef looks like rock and is built by animals. A coral polyp is a soft creature the size of a pinhead. It draws calcium from the sea water and builds a hard cup around itself. Millions of polyps, cup upon cup, become a reef. Inside each polyp live tiny algae. The algae make food from sunlight and pass most of it to the polyp. In exchange they get shelter and the polyp's waste. Neither could build a reef alone. When the water gets too warm, the polyps expel the algae. Without them the coral turns white and starves. That is what bleaching means. A reef takes centuries to build and can bleach in a single hot summer.

  1. 1. How big is a coral polyp?
  2. 2. Summarise this text.
  3. 3. Determine the main idea of this text and explain how key details support it.

LessonPrint · SL.4.2 · Set 22 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Paraphrase What You Heard

Set 22. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Two thousand litres. 2. A clear ring where the bacteria had died. 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 size of a pinhead. 2. Coral reefs are built by pinhead-sized polyps that make calcium cups and live in partnership with algae, and warm water breaks that partnership and bleaches the reef. 3. A reef is built by a partnership of two organisms — supported by the exchange between polyp and algae and by what bleaching is.

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.