Students who have difficulty retelling a story need to learn how to summarize. In order to summarize a text, a student must be able to distinguish between important and unimportant parts of text, and then put the central ideas together in a cohesive way. To do this, a student must be able to successfully self-monitor, ask and answer questions, and be familiar with elements of different text structures. This page include strategies that you can use to support your students' ability to summarize. As you read, consider which of these interventions best aligns with your students' strengths and needs in the whole-learner domains.
Explicit Instruction
To support your students' ability to summarize, you should start by explicitly teaching the concept. This sounds like:
Explain the Skill/Concept. Define summarize and explain the activity. ("Summarizing means we are able to accurately retell the information we read, in a short, and concise way. This means that we choose the most important parts of the story, ignore the parts that are unimportant, and then retell the story in our own words." "Today, we are going to practice summarizing.")
Model Skill with Examples. Think aloud about how you summarize. ("When I read a text, I try to figure out which events are important, and which are just details that make the story more interesting. Then, I can take the important events and put them back into my own words. Let's take The Giver, for example. I am going to summarize the main events in the story, and leave out the unimportant information: The novel The Giver is about a young boy named Jonas who lives in a dystopian society. This society believed that Sameness was essential, so that no person felt emotions that were hard to handle. When he turns 12, Jonas receives the job of The Receiver of Memory. In this position, he learns from the past Receiver, now called the Giver, who transfers memories of the past to Jonas. Through these memories, Jonas experiences all the emotions that his community has restricted. He experiences warmth by the fire, exhilaration from a sled ride, and deep sadness from death. Jonas decides that he can no longer stay in a community that suppresses these feelings, so he and the Giver concoct a plan for Jonas' escape. At the end of the story, Jonas leaves the community and goes out into the unknown.")
Model Skill with Non-Examples. Think aloud about summarizing without choosing only the important events. ("Listen as I summarize The Giver again: The Giver is a book about a boy named Jonas. He has two friends, Fiona and Asher. One day, he sees Fiona's red hair. When he turns 12, he receives the position of The Receiver of Memory. Every day, Jonas meets the the Giver in his chambers and the Giver transmits memories of the past. The Giver does this by putting his hands on Jonas's back. The first memory Jonas receives is sledding down a hill. He also receives a memory of war. He is very sad about the war and so he decides to run away. He takes Gabriel and leaves. When I summarized the story this time, I included unimportant details, like the fact that he has two friends, and how he receives memories. Then, I skipped some really important details, like why he wants to run away. I also skipped important events that occurred between Jonas receiving memories of war and running away. In order to create a strong summary, I need to distinguish between important and unimportant details and events." )
Practice the Skill. Engage in the activity below to practice the skill with your student, providing feedback as necessary. ("Now you try summarizing.")
Activity A: Somebody Wanted But So Then (SWBST)
SWBST is a easy and interactive way to get students to summarize a story using only a few sentences. It allows students to zoom in on the most important parts of the test and then put these pieces together to form a summary statement. This structure also allows students to apply their knowledge of each of the story elements. This strategy can be used for any students who struggle with retell or have difficulty distinguishing important details from unimportant details. This is also a good strategy to use for texts that have multiple perspectives or multiple characters. Students can use SWBST to present alternate views in the text. SWBST can be used for both narrative and informational text (especially history texts!).
This strategy includes 5 steps:
SWBST in Action
This activity takes place after a class has finished The Giver. In this example, the whole class is constructing the SWBTS.
Teacher: "Let's see if we can summarize The Giver using a strategy called Somebody Wanted But So Then. The first step is to identify the main character, the Somebody. Who knows the Somebody in The Giver?"
Student: "There were many characters, but Jonas was the main somebody. But, the Giver was pretty important, too."
Teacher: "Let's try using them both in our S. So far we have, Jonas and the Giver...What about W? What did they want?"
Student: "They wanted a real lifestyle, free from all the rules. They wanted a colorful, musical world!"
Teacher: "Great ideas. Who can put those ideas into a W sentence for us?"
Student: "Jonas and the Giver wanted a different lifestyle, free from the rules and regulations of the community!"
Teacher: "Now on to B, But. Who can think of the problem that kept the characters from reaching their goal?"
Student: "The But is that they weren't allowed to leave the community. They also had to protect the people so they didn't have to deal with the sad memories of the past."
Teacher repeats the sentence with the students' ideas added into the B, and then asks for the final two steps.
Teacher: "Here is our SWBST class-generated sentence: "Jonas and the Giver wanted a different lifestyle, free from the rules and regulations of the community. They weren't allowed to leave the community, but they devised a plan together, and Jonas fled the community to search for a different life, while the Giver stayed back to help the community deal with the memories that would return to them."
Activity B: Cause & Effect
Cause & Effect graphic organizers are another way to get students to summarize key events in both narrative and informational texts. They help students to see the direct relationship between actions and results. This is an effective intervention to use with both narrative and informational texts across content areas.
Cause and Effect Graphic Organizer PDF
Cause and Effect in Action
This example also uses the text from The Giver.
Teacher: "Let's revisit the part in the story where Jonas took a risk to leave the community. Let's write this under cause. Now, what was the effect of this action on the community?"
Student: "The community was flooded with the memories he had because he left. They had to deal with all of the terrible memories the Giver gave him."
Teacher: "On your own, think of three other effects that Jonas's leaving had on the community. When you are finished, share your effects with a neighbor."
Think about the following scenario, which takes place after a teacher has explicitly taught students how to summarize and has given them multiple opportunities for practice:
Teacher: "What is the main problem in The Giver?"
Student: "The guy was getting too old and he was going to die."
In such a case, what might you do?
When you are planning your lessons, you should anticipate that your students will make errors throughout. Here are a series of prompts that you can use to respond to errors. Keep in mind that all students are different, and that students might respond better to some types of feedback than others.
| Level of Support | Description of Scaffold | Script |
|---|---|---|
| Smallest Scaffold | Try again! Allows student multiple opportunities to practice new skill. You are trying to determine whether the student needs to be retaught the skill or just needs an opportunity to try again. | "Try again. Can you think of another main problem?" |
| Medium Scaffold |
Provide Resources. Allows the student to use resources to figure out the answer (including helpful supports such as a visual or a prompt).
|
"Let's revisit SWBST. Who is the main character?" (Go through all steps.) |
| Highest Scaffold | Rewind. If students aren't understanding how to use the support you've provided, then reteach the strategy using the student's text. | "Let's review how we determine the main problem in the story...Let's look back on the events in the story together." |
If your student struggles to meet your objective, there are various techniques that you might try to adjust the activity so as best to meet your student's needs.
| Activity | Description of Strategy | Script |
|---|---|---|
|
All Summarizing Activities |
Make it Move. If a student is struggling with any of these activities, create manipulatives. For example, you might make word cards of all of the characters and settings, and have students choose from them to create the SWBST. Or, you could have students write down all the causes and then effects and match them. |
"Here are word cards with the characters, settings, and events. Can you use these cards to outline your SWBST?" |
| Simplify. Have them practice the strategy with simpler texts. | "Let's try using this strategy with a text you already know, like Cinderella. What caused her to lose her slipper?" | |
| Partner Up! Have your students take turns being the "Expert" and explaining the strategies to each other. | "Turn to a partner and show them your SWBST. Take turns explaining how you decided what to put in each section." | |
| Practice, practice, practice. Have students apply these strategies across genres. | "Let's look at another text and use SWBST." |