Today's Strategy: Summarizing

Summarizing can be a difficult task, especially when we are used to retelling a story from beginning to end with LOTS of detail!  Today we learned how to summarize a text using main idea and sequence of events as the important components of the skill.

1. First I read a couple of pages out loud to the students. 
   
2. I stopped and asked them to write down on a sticky note one or two main events that happened in that part of the story we read.
   
3. Then we read a little further in the chapter.
   
4. When we stopped, we jotted down again, a couple more main events that occurred during that part of the reading.
   
5. We then took the 4 main ideas from the section we read and used them as a guideline to write a summary that included the following:

• Transition words (First, then, while, next, in the end) 

•  Some detail, but not so much to bog down the summary turning into a retell

Make sure that you read your  summary out loud so that you can see if it makes sense and if what you included are in fact main events and not minor details.


If you aren't sure if what you wrote is a minor detail or is a main event, use the following example to help guide you:

• The horse got spooked and sped through the forest. (Main event)
• The sky was cloudy, and it rained all afternoon.  Everything was wet for the entire day and the kids couldn't play outside. (Minor details)

Good luck on summarizing your current event articles tonight!