Four summarization ideas from the classroom of
Kelly Rubero:

Five complimentary resources from the NNWP's Reading in the Content Areas Guide:

During the 2006-2007 school year, I taught a 7th grade Reading Strategies class. One of the first things that I assigned was a summarization activity. As it turned out, my students thought that it was ok to just copy word for word what they had read. I ended up putting together an entire unit on how to summarize and take notes. I also talked with my students about the differences between summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting. And I always started off my unit with a lesson or two on plagiarism.

Below are four of the short lessons that I used with my 7th graders to help them grasp the idea of summarizing. I also tied in other reading strategies as I went along with my planning. The REAP Strategy was given to my staff from one of our Instructional Coaches and it can be used with any level in any content area.

• Summarizing Teen Star Quotations Activity
• Three-part Paired Guided Reading & Practice with Summarization Activity
• Two-Column Note-Taking and Summarization Practice
• REAP Strategy Worksheet

The five free-to-use resources below come from the Northern Nevada Writing Project's 2006 Reading in the Content Areas Guide. If you like these resources and would like to order a copy of the RICA Guide in order to have access to many more excellent ideas, please visit the NNWP's publication page. All monies earned from the sale of this excellent guide go to fund further free-to-use developments here at the WritingFix website.

In Spring 2009, the Reading in the Content Areas Guide will be officially "retired," which means it will no longer be available for purchase.

Please enjoy and share the summary resources that come from this guide:

A Popular and Creative WritingFix Lesson that Requires Students to Summarize

• The Concept Web -- Using a Concept Web allows students to create a visual map of the content of a reading selection. The web helps students organize the main ideas and details within the reading and see the relationships and hierarchy between the ideas and concepts.
• Summary Frames -- Summary frames are a series of questions that emphasize the important elements within a text pattern. Students answer the questions, then write summaries based on their responses.
• Key Concept Synthesis -- Struggling readers often have difficulty focusing on the key concepts within a text. Using the Key Concept Synthesis strategy helps students identify the important ideas as they read, use their own words to express the ideas, then explain why the ideas are important and make connections to other ideas.
• Power Thinking -- A variation of traditional outline formats, this strategy helps students take notes as they actively read the textbook, classify information, and understand main ideas and details. Students learn to apply Power Thinking as they read their textbooks in order to help sort the main ideas from details.
• Headings to Questions Guide -- The Headings to Questions Guide combines two reading and note-taking strategies, SQR3 and Cornell notes. Students work to create their own reading guide as they preview and question the text.

Lesson TItle: Unlikely Diary Keepers
Lesson's Mentor Text: The Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin

Focus Trait/skill: Idea Development/putting research into one's own words

Lesson Summary: The writer will assume the role of a living creature (like an arthropod) or an abstraction (like a fraction) that they are learning about.  Writers will do research on the animal or abstraction they have chosen, learning new facts about these topics.  The writer will compose an imaginary 5- or 10-day diary, from the point-of-view of his/her researched role; each entry must contain a reference to a newly learned fact, and some entries should try to include humor (just as Doreen Cronin does in her book on earthworms).

(Click on the lesson title or book cover to access this summary assignment on-line.)

Seven complimentary resources from one of the NNWP's Writing Across the Curriculum Guide:

The seven free-to-use resources below come from the Northern Nevada Writing Project's 2006 Writing Across the Curriculum Guide. If you like these resources and would like to order a copy of the WAC Guide in order to have access to many more excellent ideas, please visit the NNWP's publication page. All monies earned from the sale of this excellent guide go to fund further free-to-use developments here at the WritingFix website.

In January of 2009, the Writing Across the Curriculum Guide will be officially "retired," which means it will no longer be available for purchase.

Please enjoy and share the summary resources that come from this guide:

More summarizing ideas coming soon!

• Summarize with a Traditional Haiku -- You can't really plagiarize a haiku from the encyclopedia or text book, can you? Teach this simple format to your students and have them create a single haiku or a series of haikus to show they can summarize information.
• Summarize with a Haiku Variation -- Here's a variation of the haiku format--instead of seventeen syllables, the writer uses seventeen words..
• Summarize with an Acrostic --You can't really plagiarize an acrostic poem from the encyclopedia or text book, can you? Teach this simple format to your students and have them create a single acrostic or a series of acrostics to show they can summarize information about vocabulary words.
• Summarize with the Alphabet Book Format -- An alphabet book makes a great group-writing summary assignment. Can you come up with 26 words or ideas (all beginning with different letters of the alphabet) that summarize a topic? Here's a worksheet to help students plan theirs.
• Summarize with a Research Recipe -- Here's a great summarizing assignment: translate research into the format of a recipe. What "ingredients" do you need to summarize a topic? What do you do with those ingredients to "cook up" your topic?
• Summarize with a Board Game--Version 1 -- This is another great group-writing task: have your students design a board game that summarizes their topic. Here's a template to help them design their board.
• Summarize with a Board Game--Version 2 -- Here's a second template for a board game, in case the first version doesn't appeal to your students.