Mentor Texts: Summarize
Summarizing, such a significant reading strategy and useful life skill! Think of how many times a day you summarize! Do you ever answer questions like this in your everyday life… What did you do today? How was your weekend? What happened last week on this show, I forget? What did you get at the grocery store? What did your mom say when she called? What happened when you went to the bank? What did you use the credit card for this month? I mean none of us have time to respond to these questions with every single little detail AND the people asking us don’t want that either!
So now how does this skill help readers? Retelling important parts and summarizing makes sure that the reader understands the connections between the events and fully comprehends the whole text. Determining the most important events in a text is a challenging skill. When a student needs to put all of these pieces together to retell a story, they are using high levels of critical thinking to decide what best describes the story. When asked what you did today, you probably don’t include brushing your teeth (but maybe you do). What judgement makes you think to not include that? How can students know which details are ok to leave out of their summary? WE SHOW THEM!
Make Summarizing Concrete
Think about your favorite picture. Does it tell everything that was happening that day or does it show a little snapshot summary that holds the story behind it close to your heart? I teach summarizing with Sophia The Summarizer. She is a photographer who specializes in snapping images that summarize the moment or event. Read more about how I teach summarizing!
Sophia The Summarizer is part of my Comprehension Crew instructional strategy. The Comprehension Crew is a group of characters each representing an essential reading skill. Each character has a profession, song, gesture, and prop that provide a concrete representation of the reading skill. These characters are used to model and reinforce each skill both in real life situations and in text. The character helps students to understand, remember, and intentionally apply skills as they are reading. This teaching format helps you provide intentional, concrete, and meaningful experiences with connection for your students. The reading character helps the skill COMES TO LIFE for the students and make it fun!
While Sophia reads, she is consistently pausing to reflect on what she just read to take snapshots of the important events and characters. At the end of the book she looks at all of her snapshots and decides which best represent the progression of the story. She offers two strategies- First, Then, Next, Last or Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then. Sophia also provides them with the confidence for summarizing texts to ensure their understanding.
Click on the picture above to see this resource pack. The product includes a model lesson to teach summarizing with any text and an abundance of connecting activities! Sophia can start helping you teach summarizing today! Read more about how I use this strategy in my classroom here!
Teaching Summarizing With Mentor Texts
Check out these books on Amazon:
- Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse
- Swimmy
- A Chair For My Mother
- If You Give A Mouse A Cookie
- Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun
- Knuffle Bunny
- Strega Nona
- Enemy Pie
- Corduroy
- Harry The Dirty Dog
- The Three Little Pigs
- Peter’s Chair
- A Bad Case of Stripes
What are your favorite books to use to teach summarizing? I would love to hear about them!
Want to know how I teach summarizing during shared reading? Click over here to read more about it!
Affiliate links were used in this blog post.
