Summarising: General Comprehension Worksheets is a flexible and practical resource that helps students develop the key comprehension strategy of summarising. Designed to work with any text or text type, this worksheet set supports students in identifying and recording the most important parts of a story or informative passage, using structured prompts and varied response formats.

These activities guide students through a range of summarising techniques, including the use of “Someone, Wanted, But” prompts, beginning–middle–end sequencing, visual summaries, and fact categorisation. This variety allows students to practise summarising fiction and non-fiction texts with increasing confidence and independence, while also supporting vocabulary development and text structure awareness.

The templates are suitable for a wide range of year levels and include blank, 12mm and 9mm lined versions for differentiation. Editable versions are also included, allowing you to modify headings, prompts or layouts to suit the specific needs of your class or focus area. Whether used as part of a whole-class modelled reading session or as an independent literacy centre activity, these worksheets provide structured support for building essential comprehension skills.

Key Learning Outcomes:

• ✅ Summarise key ideas and events from a range of text types
• ✅ Use scaffolds such as “Someone, Wanted, But” to structure summaries
• ✅ Retell a text in sequential order using beginning, middle and end
• ✅ Organise information from non-fiction texts into categories
• ✅ Strengthen comprehension through written and visual summary formats

What’s Included:

• Summarising scaffolds including:
• Someone, Wanted, But
• Beginning–Middle–End retell pages
• Visual and written summary templates
• Informative text summary split into key facts and interesting facts
• Editable versions of all worksheets for full customisation
• Blank, 12mm and 9mm lined options to suit different learners

Materials Needed:

• Printed worksheets
• Pencils or markers
• Selected fiction or non-fiction texts
• Optional: highlighters for identifying key information

How to Use:

• Choose a template based on the type of text and your lesson focus
• Model how to summarise using a shared text and think-aloud strategy
• Guide students to complete each section using sentence stems and visuals
• Encourage discussion and comparison between students’ summaries
• Use editable versions to personalise prompts or adjust text level

Ideas for Classroom Use:

• 💡 Integrate into your guided reading program as a follow-up task
• 💡 Use to assess comprehension across a range of genres and topics
• 💡 Incorporate into book studies or author studies to track theme and character
• 💡 Pair with informative texts in science or humanities units

Top Teacher Tips:

• 💛 Use the visual summary template to support EAL or younger learners
• 💛 Encourage students to highlight key phrases in the text before writing
• 💛 Display completed summaries as part of a comprehension strategy wall
• 💛 Revisit summarising templates throughout the year to build fluency and depth

Summarising: General Comprehension Worksheets gives students the tools they need to extract and record key information, improve text comprehension, and communicate their understanding clearly. With flexible formats and editable support, this resource can be used again and again across all areas of the curriculum.

This resource is part of our comprehensive Comprehension Strategies Workbook PACKAGE.