Rachel Jennings
REED 663
Dr. Pitcher
December 2010
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Summarizing is a comprehension skill to evaluate a reader’s
understanding of a text. To summarize, readers must recognize the most
important information and restate it in their own words. Young students
understand that this skill involves the retelling of a story, but often have
difficulties identifying the main ideas that need to be included and
frequently include unnecessary details. Students can summarize a text
through writing, conversation, or pictures.
As students’ summarizing skills improve, they are then able to synthesize
information by using what they have learned and combining this new
information with their own thinking. This allows them to increase
cognitive skills and to think from new perspectives. Students then
understand the text without just recalling facts and are able to make
sense of the information.
Harvey, S. & Goudvis, A. (2007) Strategies That Work: Teaching
Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement. York, ME:
Stenhouse Publishers.
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The purpose of this project was to develop a
way to teach summarizing to a class of sixth
graders. This class consisted of 29 students
on various reading levels. This was the first
formal lesson taught on summarizing,
although this skill has been taught in other
content areas and in previous years.
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VSC: 2.A.4.d- Summarize
or paraphrase
Objective: Students will
be able to identify
important ideas in order to
summarize text.
Students will create a
“thinking sheet” with two
columns labeled “what is
important” and “what is
interesting.” Students will
use this information to
summarize sections of the
text.
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Two Column Think Sheet
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Students will be reading
“The Trouble Making
Crow” out of their Scott
Foresman anthology. This
story is an excerpt taken
from Jean Craighead
George’s novel The
Tarantula in My Purse. It is
about the author’s own
experiences with crows as
pets. Jean Craighead
George shares her stories
about two pet crows and
reveals what she learns
about their behavior.
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Day One:
 Students are introduced to the story, “The
Trouble-Making Crow” and students were given
instruction on vocabulary and provided with
necessary background knowledge.
 Students then discussed what it means to
summarize. Some of their responses were:
▪ “Summarizing is telling the story over again.”
▪ “Summarizing is rewriting important information.”
▪ “We use summarizing in our World Cultures Class to
review what we learned about Latin America.”
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Day One:
 Through a think aloud, I modeled how to
distinguish between what is important and what
is interesting. I recorded these ideas on a Two
Column Thinking Chart on the overhead.
 At the end of the period, I modeled how to use
this information to summarize what was read.
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Day Two:
 As a class we reviewed what was done the
previous day.
 Students were then paired with another student
to continue reading and identify “what is
important” and “what is interesting” on their two
column note-taking sheet.
 As students worked with their partners I walked
around and monitored students’ comprehension.
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Day Two:
 At the end of the period, students received their
“Exit Assignment.” Students were asked to
complete a brief summary of the days reading.
They were asked to include important details
from their notes.
 Students’ work was collected and assessed. I
noticed that students had many “interesting
facts” but they included several irrelevant details
in their “what is important” column. This seemed
to make their summaries overly detailed.
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Day Three:
 I pulled a small group of students to work with
based on their work the previous day. The
students that I pulled needed extra support
identifying the most important details. As I
worked with the small group, I modeled the
strategy through another think aloud and
gradually had them work independently.
 A group of students, based on their reading ability
and special education accommodations,
completed the story at the listening station.
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Day Three:
 As a result of the students’ work the previous day, I
modified the lesson by creating a guided reading with
a two column note-taking sheet. The columns were
still labeled “what is important” and “what is
interesting.”
 Students were asked to finish reading the story
independently and complete the note-taking sheet.
 The students final assessment was to summarize a
portion of the text. These were collected and then
reviewed at the end of class.
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I have the opportunity to co-plan with
another 6th Grade Reading Teacher. We both
noticed the difficulty that students were
having when identifying important details
with a partner. This is why I created a Guided
Reading.
The other teacher said that the extra support
helped her students identify the important
details and they were able to successfully
summarize the text.
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I have noticed that the students in my 6th grade
class still need practice distinguishing between
important details and interesting details. I will
continue to review and practice this skill with
various stories throughout the year. Given more
opportunities to practice, students will be more
successful in creating summaries. I would
encourage other teachers to have students
identify main ideas and supporting details when
providing students with a reading.