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

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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.

Daedalus and Icarus

Daedalus was the finest craftsman in the world, and King Minos kept him prisoner because of it. He and his son Icarus were shut in a tower above the sea. Daedalus watched the gulls for a summer. Then he gathered feathers, laid them in rows from short to long, and bound them with wax and thread into two pairs of wings. "Fly in the middle," he told Icarus. "Too low and the sea spray soaks the feathers. Too high and the sun softens the wax." They rose from the tower together. For a while Icarus followed exactly. Then the boy found that he could climb. He forgot the tower, the sea, the warning. He went up, and up, until the wax ran and the feathers came away one at a time and the sky let go of him. Daedalus flew on alone. He never made anything again.

  1. 1. Summarise this myth.
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Quarry, Filled

Stanza one: They took the hill away in carts for ninety years, and then they stopped. The hole they left filled up with rain until the rain had reached the top. Stanza two: Now people swim where men once cut. The water hides the ledge, the crane, the drill-marks in the standing rock, the tracks, the shed, the loading lane. Stanza three: The children diving off the edge have never heard the word for it. They call it "the lake". They are not wrong. A thing becomes what people make of it.

  1. 1. Summarise what happens across this poem.

LessonPrint · RL.4.2 · Set 3 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Summarise the Text

Set 3. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. Imprisoned by Minos, Daedalus built wings of feather and wax, warned Icarus to fly in the middle, and lost him when the boy flew too high.
  2. 2.1. A quarry worked for ninety years filled with rain, its workings went under water, and the children who swim there call it a lake.

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