Summarizing is telling the main ideas or events of a story in your own words. A good summary includes setting, main characters, problem, and resolution.
Summarizing helps the student focus on the most important ideas in the story.
Story Board
Students are given a story board and sketch the main ideas of the story. Students are given a specific number of boxes in the story board dependent on the story. Tell students to fill in the beginning and end boxes first to ensure they do not run out of story boards to summarize the story. Next, students should decide on the middle of the story which is usually the problem of the story and fill in this section of the story board. Finally, students will have to decide on the important details and sketch in the remaining story boards.
Reduction Writing
Students write the main events of a story being sure to include the main characters, setting, problem, and resolution. Students will write their first draft of a summary and continually reduce it, until only the main ideas and necessary detail are included. Teacher may decide on a number of words or sentences allowed to summarize the story.
News Reporter
Students only answer the Who, What, Why, Where, When, and How to summarize the story. Students will answer each question in a sentence and then begin to join sentences to eliminate unnecessary information.
Students write headlines for a newspaper article or have students match headlines with a variety of stories.
Somebody Wanted But So…
Place the four words: somebody, wanted, but, and so in a chart form. Students will decide on the important information for the four words; somebody (Who) wanted (action) but (problem) so (solution). This reading comprehension strategy streamlines the information for the student as it gives them a starting point.
What’s the Big Idea?
The first time a student is asked to summarize they will include most of the information, not sure how to disentangle the important ideas from the story. Begin a lesson with students only allowed to use one word to summarize a story and begin to add to the word as a class. As a class, keep asking what the big idea is.
Compare summarizing a story to summarizing a movie. A student who excitedly retells a movie just gives the big ideas giving a few necessary details and the odd interesting fact of the movie.
How to find the main ideas in a story is a difficult reading comprehension strategy to teach, but graphic organizers make the task less complicated. Model a variety of main idea reading comprehension strategies and have students choose their own strategy to summarize the story.
