I just learned this amazing trick to get students to write a great summary! Just tell them to write a summary in 25 words or less. The students start out trying to shove all the details into the summary and then ask me if they can use more words. After I tell them no, they start realizing ON THEIR OWN that details don't make a true summary. This is so fabulous!
I also had a few students who didn't really care if they were truly summarizing, so I gave each group of 4 students a short story that was cut up into 4 different parts. The parts were numbered and each student had to write a 25 word summary for their part. (I have my kids in cooperative groups, so my lowest student received the first part of the story and my highest student in that group received the last part. This is an awesome activity to challenge all students. My lowest students in the groups were working on only summarizing while my other 3 students were working on different levels of inferring.)
After the summaries are written, I've done a few different things:
1. Have the group read ONLY their summaries. They can't say anything else. If they think the story makes sense based upon their summary, then they are finished. If not, they need to rewrite their summaries until the summaries make sense as a story.
2. I've had all the number 1 students get together and go over their summaries as a group and then revise before going back to their original group. Same thing with students 2-4. When they get back to their groups they follow the above strategy.
I really like this way of summarizing. How do you teach your students summarizing?
