Summarizing teaches students how to identify the most important ideas in a text, how to ignore irrelevant information, and how to integrate the central ideas in a meaningful way. Teaching students to summarize improves their memory for what is read. Summarization strategies can be used in almost every content area.
In student-friendly terms, summarizing is telling the most important parts of a text, in your own words, in a much shorter way. Teaching summarizing shows students how to discern the essential ideas in a text, how to ignore irrelevant information, and how to integrate the central ideas in a meaningful way. Teaching students to summarize improves their memory for what they read and acts as a check for comprehension. Summarizing is a complex skill that will continue to develop over time, as students read increasingly complex texts.
Summarizing can be tricky, even for adults. The leap from retelling — which asks readers to recall the events in a story in logical order — to determining what is important or essential in a story and condensing the information into a summary, is a big one. A good way to scaffold young readers’ growing ability to summarize is to model and practice summarizing routines. The routine or structure that makes the most sense will be different depending on students’ age and experience.
Try transitioning from structured routines for teaching story sequence, such as “Beginning, Middle, and End” and “First, Next, Then, Last”, to structured summarizing routines such as “Someone Wanted But So Then” or “Five-Finger (5Ws)” summarizing. These scaffolds give students a visual representation of their thinking and a way to structure their responses while prompting them to think about more than just the sequence of events.
For students who have had more practice identifying story elements and determining important ideas, try using more open-ended routines such as Sum it Up for $2.00 or other keyword-focused approaches to summarizing.
For students who are comfortable with the concept of main ideas and important details:
1. Begin by reading or by having students listen to the text selection to be summarized.
2. Ask students the following framework questions:
3. Have them use keywords or phrases to identify main points from the text.
This demonstration uses the Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then (SWBST) strategy to summarize key elements in a fictional text — in this example, the story of Mulan.
The K–2 activities described in this video focus more explicitly on using story elements (characters, setting, problem, solution) as a basis for retelling and summarizing. The K-1 activities include oral summaries, illustrations, and acting out by students. The grade 2 is a small group retelling and summarizing activity with card prompts for story elements that can include a writing component.
The teacher explains “Sum It Up for $2.00”, a strategy for summarizing using keywords from the text.
For a comprehensive list of summarizing activities, including a collection of non-written summary activities, see Quick Summarizing Strategies to Use in the Classroom.
Get the Gist, a resource from the U.K. National Behaviour Support Service includes many graphic organizers and lesson ideas.
Here’s a lesson plan (opens in a new window) for helping students learn to summarize using Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
Jones, R. (2007). Strategies for Reading Comprehension: Summarizing. Retrieved 2008, January 29, from http://www.readingquest.org/strat/summarize.html.
Guthrie, J. T. (2003). Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction: Practices of Teaching Reading for Understanding. In C. Snow & A. Sweet (Eds.), Reading for Understanding: Implications of RAND Report for Education (pp. 115-140). New York: Guilford.
When a tsunami orphans a young hippopotamus, a group of concerned Malidi (on the east coast of Kenya) villagers figure out how to capture the 600 pound baby thus beginning his new life in an animal sanctuary with a new and unlikely companion — a 130 year old tortoise named Mzee. Full color photographs and straightforward text are used in this inspiring, appealing and true story told first by a young girl and her father.
