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 9 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.
Pandora
The gods made Pandora and gave her, between them, everything: beauty, skill, a voice, curiosity.
They also gave her a jar, and told her not to open it. They did not say what was in it.
She kept it for a long time. The story is usually told as though she opened it immediately. She did not.
When she did lift the lid, out came sickness, hunger, grief and every trouble that has since been ordinary. She got the lid back on with one thing still inside.
That thing was hope. And people have argued for three thousand years about whether keeping it in was a mercy or the cruellest part of all.
1. Summarise this myth.
LessonPrint · RL.5.2 · Set 9 · free to copy for classroom use
Answer key — Summarise a Literary Text
Set 9. 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. The gods gave Pandora every gift including curiosity and a jar she must not open; when she finally did, every trouble escaped and only hope stayed in.
Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to RL.5.2 of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts.