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Garden City School Library: 3 - Summarizing Stories

Essential Question

How can I distill a story into a brief summary?

1 - Discussion and Practice

  • Introduction: Ask the students what summarizing is and why it's a good skill to have. Explain that we're going to start with summarizing fiction.
     
  • Group discussion: Introduce the Somebody / Wanted / But / So / Then framework for summarizing a plot. Show this video to get it stuck in their brains: 



 

  • Readaloud and discussion: Read We Don't Eat Our Classmates by Ryan T. Higgins. 

    Afterwards, work as a group to summarize it. Who are the "somebodies"? What do they want?  Type up the summaries as the students share their ideas and save the document to use next week.

     

Lesson 2 - Individual Assignment

  • Discussion: Bring up the summaries you typed up last time to show how they can be so different, but still all correct. Emphasize that the BUT has to be a problem interfering with the WANT, because often on this assignment, the students make non sequiturs.

     
  • Readalound and individual work: Read Creepy Pair of Underwear! - written by Aaron Reynolds and illustrated by Peter Brown. Using this template, students summarize the story. After I'm done, I play a video version while they work in case they need to go through the plot again.



     
  • Assessment:

    4 = exceptionally well-written summary that encompasses key plot elements in just a couple of sentences

    3 = all elements within framework included and make sense 

    2 = summary element missing or improperly placed​ (kids often have a problem making the "but" transition)

    1 = student clearly was not listening to the story

 

Standards Addressed

AASL: I.B.3 - Learners engage with new knowledge by following a process that includes generating products that illustrate learning; I.C.1 - Learners adapt, communicate, and exchange learning products with others in a cycle that includes interacting with content presented by others; III.D.1 - Learners actively participate with others in learning situations by actively contributing to group discussions; IV.B.4 - Learners gather information appropriate to the task by organizing information by priority, topic, or other systematic scheme.

Common Core: RL.4.2 - Summarize the text; RL.4.6 - Compare and contrast the point of view from which different stories are narrated; SL.5.2 - Summarize a written text read aloud

Rhode Island Cross-Curricular Proficiencies: Communication - Communicate understanding and interpretation of information; Problem Solving and Critical Thinking - Implement a plan or process of approach using tools and information.

Rhode Island School Library Curriculum Priority Skills: 1.1 - Summarizes information; states the main idea with some supporting details; 3.2 - Actively contributes to group discussions