Metacognitive Skills - Summarizing

Summarizing

Research

  • This is a high level skill area in terms of being able to reduce text into a condensed form, while highlighting the main details or points of the initial text.
  • It is key to discern what about the text is important, or what identifies the writer’s purpose or intent. This can be one of the more challenging skills to teach, and requires consistent modeling and practice (ASCD).
  • Summarizing is one of the most powerful tools students can use to support reading comprehension (Sedita, 2022).

    Clearly Identified Key Outcomes

    Use your programs of study for curriculum outcomes related to summarizing

    Please refer to CESD’s Essential Outcomes work if you are using the previous Alberta Curriculum (Grade 7+).

    Here is the New Alberta ELAL Curriculum, from the New Learn Alberta website, laid out like a scope and sequence.

    Balanced Assessment Practices

    • The student should be able to:
      • Identify main ideas
      • Identify relevant information
      • Order information in a logical sequence
      • Compact information into a cohesive format

    Purposeful Instructional Strategies

    PRE

    • Modeling how to create good summaries is an essential step which must be consistently repeated.
    • Teach students the following: (largely division two and up)
      • Unimportant details
      • Repetitious information
      • Main idea/topic sentence
      • Create a topic sentence
    • List the steps to creating an effective summary.Summary rules:
      • Keep necessary details only (key ideas, words or phrases)
      • Shorten lists into categories
      • Identify topic sentences
      • Mesh information
      • Concluding sentences

    DURING

    • Students could start by answering the questions, who, what, when, where, why and how, when appropriate.
    • Have students summarize the text, and then share with each other their summaries. Provide feedback based on whether or not sentences could have been combined, or if some information is redundant.
    • Have students read a passage, and then underline what they believe are the important ideas. Use the underlined sentences to begin to form a summary in their own words.  Students need to check their writing with the underlined sentences in order to ensure they have the main ideas connected in a summary paragraph.
    • In lengthier articles to summarize, have students summarize their initial work, then summarize again, and then once again until the information is in as much of a compact form as possible.
    • Summarizing can also be taught and practised orally as students summarize presentations, movies, web content, speeches, etc.
    • Strategies or formats are available that can help students summarize text (somebody wanted, but, then, so…).

    POST

    • Work with students individually, modeling how to look for clues. Have students read two or three sentences at a time, and then underline the key words, or draw a picture representing what was read.
    • Modeling how to create good summaries is an essential step which must be consistently repeated.

    RESOURCES TO SUPPORT OVERALL DEVELOPMENT

    • Paragraph Shrinking (Reithaug, 2009, p. 259)

    Personalization of Learning

    • Struggling readers usually summarize concepts according to what has interested them vs main ideas. Be certain to stress main idea or topic sentence understanding.
    • Work with students individually, modeling how to look for clues.
    • Practice identifying keywords and ideas.