Summarizing

Summarize: a within the text strategic action, readers remember important information and retell it in sequence.

Minilesson Resources

Summarizing Minilessons and Practice Activities: from Teacher 2 Teacher, includes lesson ideas, videos of sample lessons, suggested mentor texts.

Comprehension Minilessons: Main Idea and Summarizing: this link takes you to a PDF copy of a Scholastic teachers' resource that includes minilessons and wrap up activities for teaching main idea and summarizing for grades 4-5.

Main idea:  a wide range of activities and resources to support teaching main idea and summarizing from smekenseducation.com

Retell/summarize: a wide range of activities to support teaching of retelling and summarizing from smekenseducation.com.

Summarizing: sample focus lessons from Wachusett Regional School District.  Lessons include What is Summarizing? and Readers Use One-Word Notes to Summarize.

Summarizing: from ohiorc.org, a large resource for lessons and ideas to teach and practice the comprehension skill of summarizing.

Anchor Charts

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from youngteacherlove.blogspot.com

from youngteacherlove.blogspot.com

from youngteacherlove.blogspot.com

Grade Level Expectations

(from Continuum of Literacy Learning, Fountas and Pinnell, 2012)

PreK

• remember what the story is about during reading
• remember information to help in understanding the end of a story
• remember important information

Kindergarten

• remember information to help in understanding the end of a story
• recall and retell the important information in or events from a story
• understand and talk about a simple sequence of events or steps

First Grade

• follow and remember a series of events over a longer text in order to understand the ending
• report episodes in a text in the order they happened
• summarize ideas and tell how they are related
• summarize a longer narrative text with multiple episodes
• identify important ideas and report them in an organized way (orally and/or in writing)
• understand the problem of the story and its solution

Second Grade

• follow and remember a series of events over a longer text in order to understand the ending
• identify/understand sets of related ideas organized into categories
• summarize longer narrative texts with multiple episodes
• identify important ideas and report them in an organized way (orally and/or in writing)
• follow a sequence of action from graphic texts

Third Grade

• follow and remember a series of events over a longer text in order to understand the ending
• summarize a text at intervals during the reading of a longer text
• identify/understand sets of related ideas organized into categories
• summarize longer narrative texts with multiple episodes
• identify important ideas and report them in an organized way

Fourth Grade

• follow and remember a series of events over a longer text in order to understand the ending
• remember information in summary form over chapters, a series of short stories, or sequels in order to understand larger themes
• identify important ideas in a text (longer and more complex narratives) and report them in an organized way, either orally or in writing
• explain events, procedures, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific or technical text based on specific information
• summarize at intervals during the reading of a longer text

Fifth Grade