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 5 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 Mill: Ivy Sallow's Account
We knew by the thread.
You cannot work a loom for twenty-two years and not notice when the good cotton stops coming. From about the March, it was the cheap stuff, and it broke.
So we knew something. What we did not know was how long we had, and that is the part I mind.
I could have been looking. My sister found work in Derby that spring and asked me twice. I said the mill would see me out.
He stood on a crate on the Friday and told us. Somebody asked how long he had known. He said he would rather not say. That was the answer, really.
1. Summarise this account.
LessonPrint · RL.5.2 · Set 5 · free to copy for classroom use
Answer key — Summarise a Literary Text
Set 5. 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. Ivy knew from the failing thread that the mill was struggling, turned down work in Derby, and learned the closure date only when Whately announced it on a Friday.
Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.5.2 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.