How to Teach Kids to Summarize

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Last Updated: June 10, 2019

A summary is a brief statement of the main points of a concept. In many schools, summarization is taught to kids as part of literature courses. Learning how to summarize is important because it helps the reader remember what they have read, and allows them to easily share the knowledge with others. Although it can be a hard concept to grasp, there are several ways that parents can help their kids learn how to summarize properly.

Part 1

Part 1 of 4:

Helping Children of All Ages Understand Summary by Talking About Their Day

A good way to help children of all ages learn how to summarize is to talk with them about their day. Let the children tell you everything about their day in one long narration, while listening attentively. Telling a long story will set up the background for a summary to be created.
2
Instruct the children to focus on a particular event. Ask children to focus on just one event in their day and retell it. To facilitate this retelling, tell the kids to focus on six basic concepts. These concepts will help the children take the most important parts of their story and summarize them.
- Focus on the six basic questions of who, what, where, when, how, and why.
- For example, have the children talk about a test they took, including who the teacher was, what subject it was on, where they were sitting in the room, when they took the test, how long it took them to finish, and why they think that they did well or didn’t do well on the test.
- Of course, there are some events that occur in our lives where it is difficult to answer all six questions, especially "why". However, this is actually a good thing, because passages in literature do not always have enough information for children to answer all six questions.
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Part 2

Part 2 of 4:

Explaining Summarization to Children of All Ages With an Example

1
Select a short piece of text to demonstrate to the children. For an easy starting piece, choose some text that is not too long. Choosing a piece that is short and not too dense will allow you to teach the concept to children with minimal struggle.
- Starting with a complex, long piece can discourage children if they haven't already mastered the basics of summarization.
2
Read the text closely. Instruct the children to read the whole piece silently or aloud. Some people find it easier to comprehend texts that they read out loud, whereas others find reading silently preferable.
- Emphasize thorough reading, tell the children not to skim.
- Tell the children to remember their goal of understanding the text thoroughly.
3
Explain what kind of information the summary must contain. Creating a summary will be easier for the children if they are given a few key parts to keep in mind. Having guidelines for content will allow them to mentally structure their summaries as they are reading and writing. There are a few key aspects to a summary:
- The main idea: a primary theme or central focus of the text.
- Important details: all parts of the text that explain the main idea of the text.
- Beginning of the summary: refers to the beginning of the text and introduces the theme.
- Rising action: an important detail that explains what happened or why something happened.
- Climax: where the story reaches its most interesting point and its biggest twist.
- End of text: where the text is concluded.
- Important details of main characters: their names, characteristics, key roles.
- Setting details: details of where and when the action takes place.
4
Show the children where the main idea of the text is. Using the text you selected, show the children where the main idea is. When you show them this, explain where it is usually found and why it is important.
- A good tip is that the main point of the text is usually near the beginning, within the first couple paragraphs.
5
Show the children where the important details are. Make sure to run through the text with the children and give examples of the key details that should be included in the summary. Explain why these details are crucial to the main point, and ask them why they chose the details they did.
- Ask them to share their thought process and explain why they thought certain things were more important than others.
6
Summarize text briefly to give the children an example. In one or two sentences, summarize the text that the children have been working on. Giving an example shows children how summarization works and what will be expected of them.
- Show them how to connect the main idea and important details in a brief description.
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Part 3

Part 3 of 4:

Taking Apart a Document With School-Aged Children

1
Instruct the children to practice summarizing a passage. After children understand how to determine which facts are important using the six basic questions, it is time for them to practice summarizing a short passage from a book. It is important for the passage to be rather short, so that it is easier for the children to read and extract the important information.
- This will ensure that children don't get discouraged by trying to sort out a long passage or chapter of a book.
Every paragraph in literature has a main idea. It is often in the first sentence, but could be located anywhere in the paragraph. Once they find the main idea, the children will understand what the paragraph is about.
3
Explain the importance of vital supporting details. The rest of each paragraph is there to support the main idea and provide detail. Not all of the details are vital information, so only some should be included in the summary.
- You should ask the children to read the passage while looking for details that answer the six basic questions.
  - For example, if it is a passage about some historical event, the children should look for when it happened, where it happened, etc.
4
Use graphic organizers to help remember the facts. If a child has trouble remembering the facts that they gather from the passage, they can write them down. Graphic organizers are very useful tools for this, and some even have the six basic questions along with blank areas for the child to fill in the information from the passage.
- There are many web sites where graphic organizers can be found and printed for free.
- If printing out the graphic organizers is not possible, you can use the online version as a guide and draw one by hand on a blank piece of paper.
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Part 4

Part 4 of 4:

Putting a Written Summary Together With School-Aged Children

1
Tell the children to begin the summary paragraph with a topic sentence. Once the child has all of the important details, you need to help them write the summary. This information should be put into a short, one paragraph summary that makes sense. Like other paragraphs, the summary paragraph should have a sentence that states the main idea, which in this case is the subject of the passage.
- Returning to the previous example of the historical event summary, the sentence could state the name of the event and also give the year that it happened.
2
Have the children add additional body sentences with supporting details. Show the child how to include some of the important details or facts in additional sentences. These facts should be contained in the sentences following the intro sentence. Include the details that answer the rest of the six questions.
- It is important that the sentences in the summary be as concise and precise as possible.
- If the sentences are long, drawn-out, and very detailed, it is more of a re-write of the passage than a summary.
3
Tell the children to re-read the summary paragraph. When they finish writing the summary paragraph, the children should read it over to be sure that it flows well from beginning to end. They should also compare it to the original passage to be sure that it says the same general thing in a more compact way.
- When a summary is turned in for a grade, it is important that it is written with grammatically correct sentences that have proper punctuation.
- If the summary is only going to be used as a personal study guide, proper grammar and punctuation aren’t really necessary, but they do make it easier to read and understand when the summary is reviewed weeks later during a study session.
Since their first summary may be either too detailed or too vague, give feedback on their quality of writing and tell them specifically on what they should improve on next time. This will not only help your child improve at this form of writing, but will also set them up for success with more difficult texts later on in life.

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