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Summarize What You Heard is a free printable Grade 5 English worksheet on summarizing a text or presentation accurately, aligned to Common Core standard SL.5.2. It prints 2 questions with an answer key on its own sheet of paper, in 25 versions that each ask different questions, so no two students in the class work from the same page. Print it from the browser or download it as a PDF — no account, no email.

Set 17 of 25 · the same problems every time you open this link.

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Set 1 has all 25 in a single PDF. All 25 sets ask different questions.

Summarize What You Heard

SL.5.2

NameDate

Read the text, then answer the questions.

1.Read the text, then answer the questions.

Why the Rails Are That Far Apart

Standard gauge is 4 feet 8½ inches. It is a strange number, and the reason is historical rather than engineering. Early railways were built by people who had built tramways for collieries, and those had used the wheel spacing of the carts already in use. Nobody chose it; it was inherited. Isambard Kingdom Brunel did choose. He built the Great Western at 7 feet ¼ inch, and by most measures it was better: faster, steadier, and able to carry more. He lost anyway. By the 1840s, more of the network was already standard gauge, and a train cannot run on a track it does not fit. Parliament settled it in 1846. Between 1846 and 1892 the Great Western converted its entire route. The final conversion took a single weekend and about four thousand men. The best design does not always win. The one that connects to everything else does.

  1. 1. What is standard gauge?
  2. 2. What gauge did Brunel choose?
  3. 3. Summarize this text.
2.Read the text, then answer the questions.

What Sleep Is For

Sleep is not switching off. Parts of the brain are busier asleep than awake. Two claims are well supported. The first is that sleep consolidates memory: during deep sleep, the day's experiences are replayed and moved from short-term storage into long-term. Interrupt deep sleep and recall of the previous day drops measurably. The second is that sleep clears waste. The spaces between brain cells widen during sleep, and fluid washes through, removing proteins that build up while awake. A third claim — that a particular number of hours suits everybody — is not supported. Need varies with age and between individuals, and self-reported sleep is unreliable. Teenagers are a special case. Their body clocks genuinely shift later at puberty, which is a biological fact rather than a preference, and school start times mostly ignore it.

  1. 1. What shifts in teenagers at puberty?
  2. 2. What happens to the spaces between brain cells during sleep?
  3. 3. Summarize this text.

LessonPrint · SL.5.2 · Set 17 · free to copy for classroom use

Answer key — Summarize What You Heard

Set 17. Prints on its own sheet.

  1. 1.1. 4 feet 8½ inches. 2. 7 feet ¼ inch. 3. Standard gauge was inherited from colliery carts, Brunel's wider gauge was better but incompatible, and the Great Western converted its whole route by 1892.
  2. 2.1. Their body clocks shift later. 2. They widen, and fluid washes through. 3. Sleep consolidates memory and clears waste from the brain, no single number of hours suits everybody, and teenagers' body clocks genuinely shift later.

More practice for SL.5.2

Summarize a text or presentation you heard or watched.

Teaching this next? Summarizing a Text Read Aloud is the 40-minute plan for it, with the misconceptions to expect.

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Last reviewed 2026-09-05. Aligned to SL.5.2 of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts.