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 15 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.
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.
What We Kept
Stanza one:
We kept the table, which was too big,
and the clock, which had never gone,
and a tin of buttons nobody wanted,
and the habit of turning lights off.
Stanza two:
We gave away the good chairs.
We gave away the china, all of it.
We gave away the piano to a school
because none of us could play.
Stanza three:
Ten years on, I would not know the chairs
if I saw them in a window on a street.
But I turn the hall light off behind me
every single time, and think of her.
1. Summarise this poem.
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.
The Refusal
The rule was that everyone in Year Six performed at the leavers' assembly.
Kemi told Mr Adeyemi she would not. Not could not — would not.
He asked why. She said that if she explained, he would try to solve it, and it was not a problem to be solved. It was a decision.
He could have made her. Instead he asked whether she would run the sound desk, which nobody had volunteered for and which meant she would be there for every rehearsal.
She said yes.
At the assembly she was at the back, in the dark, and every cue was perfect. Her mother asked afterwards why she had not been in it. Kemi said she had been.
1. Summarise this story.
LessonPrint · RL.5.2 · Set 15 · free to copy for classroom use
Answer key — Summarise a Literary Text
Set 15. Prints on its own sheet.
1.1. A family keeps some useless things and gives away the valuable ones, and ten years later only an inherited habit still connects the speaker to the dead.
2.1. Kemi refused to perform at the leavers' assembly, her teacher offered her the sound desk instead, and she ran it perfectly and counted herself as having taken part.
Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.5.2 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.