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 3 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.
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. Summarise this myth.
LessonPrint · RL.5.2 · Set 3 · free to copy for classroom use
Answer key — Summarise a Literary Text
Set 3. 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. 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.