Summarizing: a Snapshot of the Story

Look at the picture on your phone background or think of a special one you have framed. What story does that moment in time tell or represent? How does just that one picture tell you a story? Pictures we choose to frame or back a digital background are usually summarizing a special moment or representing a special person to us. These snapshots of a moment in time tell a bigger story to our hearts. Why do we usually pick the one of us smiling rather than the one where the baby is crying and someone is looking at the ground? Not only does it look better but it portrays the story of that being a happy moment.

Summarizing is making a word picture to show a snapshot of the text. It doesn’t give us every detail but enough to understand the main idea. Although we summarize in our daily conversations all the time, utilizing (and teaching) this as a reading strategy can be difficult but it doesn’t have to be!!

Hook Those Sports Fans!

For me, the most essential piece of teaching reading strategies is making them concrete for my students. I start off with showing a recap of a football game, these are all over youtube. I used the Ravens championship game highlights when I was teaching in Maryland.

Throughout the video I kept pausing it and pointing out how the clock was jumping around and the field positions kept switching quickly, I asked the class why. They thought I didn’t know how sports worked of course and explained that they are just showing the big plays. Ding ding ding! They are SUMMARIZING!

At the end, we talked about how we felt like we knew what happened during that 3 hours game just by watching a 5 minute clip! We discussed how the sports announcers chose which plays to show us. I made sure to point out that even smaller moments towards the beginning are important to show because they are part of what sets the stage (dictates the score) for later events.

Suddenly, my students had a whole new view on summarizing! So it was time to introduce Sophia The Summarizer to help us learn how to take snapshots of the text!

During my shared reading time, I use Comprehension Crew characters to model reading strategies for my students. Then we read interactively as they practice implementing the strategies themselves. Read more about that below!

Sophia The Summarizer

Sophia The Summarizer is a photographer who has a knack for snapping the perfect picture to represent (or summarize) your story! She loves to teach students how to do this too! A big part of Sophia’s strategy is determining the most important parts of the text. Determining importance is a huge piece of teaching students to summarize. Often in stories there are funny moments or your favorite little details that just are not the most essential parts to include in the summary. The best way to teach students this is to model it for them.

What is the Comprehension Crew?

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 life and in text. The character helps students to understand, remember, and intentionally apply skills as they are reading.

Modeling While Reading

Using Sophia’s tips and tricks, I read a picture book across 5 days during shared reading. Each day after I read another portion of the book I write what I think are the most important details on a post it note. I take input from the students and we discuss what should be on there. On the second day of reading and as the week goes on, I draw 3 columns on the board- Interesting, Important, and Unnecessary. Each day when we add new details, we also reflect on the existing post it notes to see if maybe they are actually interesting details rather than important. It is also important to show readers that some details that seem like they will be really important and influential in the story, might not be so then we move it to unnecessary. At the end of the week only the most important details should be left in the center column.

Throughout the week you should reference whichever sentence frame you will be using of the two below so students have this in mind as they are choosing the important details.

• Somebody, wanted, but, so, then
• First, then, next, last

On the last day, Sophia guides the students through putting through important details into your summary sentence frame!

Practicing with Pictures

In my Sophia The Summarizer resource pack, there are task cards for students to practice summarizing. There are photograph task cards and short paragraph summaries on cards to practice. It is important for students to practice summarizing on a small scale to gain understanding and confidence in the skill. Often an entire text can be overwhelming, especially for younger students! Differentiated passages on worksheets with scaffolded graphic organizers and questions are also included to help your students break down determining importance!

Mentor Texts to Teach Summarizing