Summarise the Text is a free printable Grade 4 English worksheet on summarising a story without retelling all of it, aligned to Common Core standard RL.4.2. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions, 17 of them with 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 10 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.
Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. 17 of these 25 sets ask different questions — this skill does not have 25 questions to give. The rest reorder them, so no two pupils have the same paper in front of them.
Summarise the Text
RL.4.2
NameDate
Read the text, then answer the questions.
1.Read the text, then answer the questions.
Low Water
Stanza one:
Twice a day the sea walks out
and leaves the harbour standing,
the boats set down on their own keels
like birds that have stopped landing.
Stanza two:
The mud shines. Old anchors show,
a bicycle, a broken chain,
the whole forgotten underneath
made briefly plain.
Stanza three:
Then, without a sound at all,
it turns and starts to come.
The bicycle goes under first.
The harbour lifts. The boats go dumb.
1. Summarise what happens across this poem.
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.
The Clock That Was Wrong
The church clock in our village had been four minutes fast for thirty years.
Everybody knew. The bus timetable was written around it. Weddings started on it. My grandmother set her oven by it, four minutes back.
Then the council paid a specialist to come and correct it.
He was there two days. When he left, the clock was exact.
Within a month, three people had missed the bus, the choir arrived late twice, and my grandmother burned a cake she had made two hundred times. The vicar wrote to the council. In March they set it four minutes fast again.
1. Summarise this story.
LessonPrint · RL.4.2 · Set 10 · free to copy for classroom use
Answer key — Summarise the Text
Set 10. Prints on its own sheet.
1.1. The tide goes out twice a day and grounds the boats, reveals the rubbish in the mud, then returns silently and lifts the harbour.
2.1. A village clock was four minutes fast for thirty years and everything was built around it; correcting it caused chaos, so they set it fast again.
Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.4.2 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.