Teaching Summarization
Learning to differentiate major and minor textual events can help students learn how to summarize.
By Dawn Dodson
One of the most difficult writing assignments for my students, rather surprisingly, is to summarize what they did over the weekend. The task of distinguishing major details from the minor ones can prove to be a challenge for students. But this goal can be easily accomplished if students are given a lot of opportunities to practice summarizing. By using graphic organizing, lists, and verbal summarizing students can distinguish the most important details to include in a summary. In addition, students can compare summaries for accuracy.The following are activities I have found to be helpful for my sixth graders.
At some point at the beginning of the school year, I ask students to make a list of the five most interesting things they did during the summer (long weekend, or some other break). The list can be of events, places, or items acquired during their break. Students take their lists and create a paragraph describing only those five items listed. We share our paragraphs, and then open a larger discussion about summarizing. I give students a two column chart and a short story. I like to read the book “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein. It is a short book that almost all my sixth graders have read at some point, which makes the information familiar. The chart is divided into “Major Details” and “Minor Details.” I point out the difference between major and minor details. Without one of the major details the story would be different, or wouldn’t make sense. While minor details help describe the major events, they wouldn’t effect the story if left out. We then go through the story and as a class identify the major and minor details. After the charts are complete, students write a summary including only the items listed in the “major events” column.
After initial summarizing practice we move from “The Giving Tree” to summarizing class and independent novels. Summarizing larger pieces of literature can be a bit daunting; therefore, I give students graphic organizers that can help them focus on major events. Some graphic organizers I use include the “five Ws" (i.e., who, what, where, when, and why), key points, and story maps/clusters. The key for my sixth graders is practice and reinforcement throughout the school year. As with other reading and writing skills, the more experience students have with summarizing, the easier it becomes. The following are more summarization lesson ideas.
Summarization Lessons:
After conducting research on the history and culture of the visual arts, students summarize the characteristics of artwork in various eras and cultures. In addition to summarizing, research and note-taking skills are practiced and reinforced.
Students learn about summarizing through learning the process of marking text and reading a scoring guide for summaries. Students then read Jane Goodall’s “Watching in the Wild,” and write a summary.
Students learn how to distinguish important information in a text and create a summary. An article is read and summarized for practice.
Students use a chart called “Five Rules for Writing a Summary” in order to guide themselves in summarizing informational text.
