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Summarise a Literary Text is a free printable Grade 5 English worksheet on summarising without retelling, aligned to Common Core standard RL.5.2. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions, 18 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 14 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

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Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. 18 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 a Literary Text

RL.5.2

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.Read the text, then answer the questions.

The Bell

Stanza one: The church has gone. They took the stone for walls and gateposts, load by load. Where the aisle was there is a field. Where the door was there is a road. Stanza two: The bell they could not sell or break. It hung in a barn for eighty years, green with the damp, out of the way, mute as a stone among the gears. Stanza three: Last spring they hung it in the school. It rings at nine and rings at three. The children do not know its age and ring it anyway, and it is free. Stanza four: So the building went, and the faith went, and the road runs where the door was cut, and still the sound the masons heard goes out at nine, and comes back, and stops.

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

Orpheus Looks Back

Orpheus played so well that rivers changed course to listen. When his wife Eurydice died, he went down to argue with the dead. He played to the ferryman, who took him free. He played to the three-headed dog, which lay down. He played to the king of the underworld, who wept, and who had never wept. The king gave one condition. Eurydice would follow him up, and he must not look back until both of them stood in the light. He climbed for a day. He could not hear her footsteps — the dead make none — and he had only the king's word. Ten paces from the daylight, he turned round. She was there. That was the last he saw of her.

  1. 1. Summarise this myth.

LessonPrint · RL.5.2 · Set 14 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Summarise a Literary Text

Set 14. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. A church was demolished for its stone, its bell hung silent in a barn for eighty years, and now it rings for a school that knows nothing about it.
  2. 2.1. Orpheus played his way into the underworld and won Eurydice back on condition he not look at her, then turned ten paces from daylight and lost her.

Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.5.2 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.