Teaching Summarizing

When students summarize they don t have to come up with any of their own ideas all they have to do is briefly tell the most important parts of a book or reading passage that they read.

Teaching summarizing. Summarizing is a skill at which most adults must be proficient to be successful. The ability to take a large body of text and break it down into its most essential parts by focusing on the important pieces and discarding irrelevant information is crucial to understanding. Using the tried and true somebody wanted but then so makes it easier. A good summary is short and to the point.

Teaching summarizing scaffolds from grades three to five. Summarizing summarizing teaches students how to discern the most important ideas in a text how to ignore irrelevant information and how to integrate the central ideas in a meaningful way. Summarizing is a vital skill for students to learn but many students find it difficult to pick out the important facts without providing too much detail. Teaching students how to summarize a text is important so important that it is part of the ccss reading standards for literature and informational texts beginning in grade 4 and continuing with greater rigor through grade 12.

Third graders simply retell the story. What is a summary. Summarizing is often used in reciprocal teaching however it is a very effective research based strategy on its own. As educators we know why summarizing will help students.

Summarization strategies can be used in almost every content area. Then we will read a short passage and two examples. Summarizing allows both students and teachers to monitor comprehension of material. Summarizing helps students understand the organizational structure of lessons or texts.

A summary is a brief recollection or account of the main points of a piece of writing action or event. Summarizing means identifying the main idea and most important facts then writing a brief overview that includes only those key ideas and details. Sounds pretty easy but it s not. To begin teaching summarizing i like to review what a summary is and what a summary is not.

A summary of the content of a piece of writing. Fourth graders summarize the details. Teaching students to summarize improves their memory for what is read. Summarizing is a level 2 skill according to the depth of knowledge and being able to do it well will set students up for higher levels of knowledge and success.

Older pupils are taught to find the key facts and events in a text and write them in a shortened form in order to increase their comprehension technique. Teaching summarizing summarizing can seem relatively unimportant independently but is essential to reading comprehension.