Polk Bros Foundation
Show, Then Write What You Learn
After reading a text or covering a new topic, have class members fill out the four boxes on this page with facts. Individuals can use words or drawings to represent the facts.
Polk Bros Foundation
How to Summarize an Event in History or Today - or a Story
Ask your class to write a quick summary of a historical or current event. The worksheet offers a place to note down important details about the event, such as time, place, people, how it started, and how it ended. Pupils then take this...
Polk Bros Foundation
I Can Analyze a Story or History Completely and Carefully
Start off analysis of a text with a worksheet that asks pupils to complete several tasks. Class members note down a couple of characters or people and their distinguishing traits, describe the most important event, summarize the text...
Education Center
Safety Sequence
Follow up a class reading of the children's book Officer Buckle and Gloria with this simple sequence-of-events worksheet. Including pictures of six key moments from the story, young learners must first number them in the correct order...
Orange County Schools
Piggybook
Summarizing text is a balancing act between being brief but thorough. You need to be short and to the point, but also cover all the important details, a task that presents a challenge for many young learners. In this lesson based on the...
Anchorage School District
Writing Effective Summaries
Drafting a strong first sentence for a summary is an important step. Writers can use the formula presented on this handout to get started. The resource lists three steps to put together a strong topic sentence, as well as tips and hints...
Curated OER
Staying in Phoenix
Read to learn! Here is a one-page informational passage about inhabitants of Phoenix, Arizona. Learners will read to make logical inferences and determine the central idea or theme. Prompts ask the class to identify the main idea and...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 17: Obituary
The Cay has been criticized by groups such as the Council on Interracial Books for Children because of the way race is portrayed. Explore the argument against the book while taking the author's perspective into account. Class members...
Curated OER
Annotated Bibliographies
What is an annotated bibliography? While not usually required until college, introducing your juniors and seniors to this type of document will prepare them for their collegiate careers. The term is defined, and the three elements of an...
Curated OER
Guest Speaker Preparation: A Cooperative Lesson
Are you planning to have a guest speaker talk to your class? Prepare in advance and help your class transform into an engaged and thoughtful audience. Before the visit, young writers work cooperatively to brainstorm what they want to...
Curated OER
Speaker Report
Fifth through eighth graders think of themselves as newspaper reporters as they listen to a presentation by a guest speaker. As reporters, they take notes during the presentation. Using these notes, they create a rough draft and then a...
Curated OER
Listening To a Guest Speaker
Pupils review the main points of note-taking to summarize the content of a formal or informal spoken presentation. They hear a guest speaker talk about a pre-arranged topic and take notes during the presentation. Next, they write a...
Curated OER
Introduce: Summarizing Narrative Text
When scholars re-tell a story, do they boil it down to important details in a logical order? Practice summarizing narratives using this think-aloud strategy, which is scripted here for your convenience. After explaining why this is an...
Curated OER
Reading the Newspaper
Students read the newspaper. In this newspaper lesson, students become familiar with the various parts of a newspaper. They read specific parts, highlight important information and summarize what they read.
Curated OER
Creating Comic Strips
Students recognize the elements needed to create a comic strip. In this comic strip lesson, student understand that comic strips need words and pictures. Students find differences and similarities in comic strips. Students describe how...
Curated OER
First Grade Goes to the Zoo
First graders summarize their trip to the zoo. In this summarizing lesson plan, 1st graders will study animals that they may see at the zoo including their characteristics and habitats. Once the trip is done, they create a word document...
Curated OER
Let's sum it all up!
Students identify that comprehension is the main goal in reading. Then they read the words in a text, but also draw information from what they read. Students also identify and practice summarization. They read a piece of text and...
Curated OER
The Secret School-Chapter 4
Fourth graders read The Secret School. For this language arts lesson, 4th graders discuss the characters in the story and read aloud using fluency while reading. Students write a summary of the chapter.
Curated OER
Sheila Rae the Brave
First graders practice summarizing with the book Sheila Rae the Brave by Kevin Henkes. In this summarizing lesson, 1st graders read the story over 3 days and answer comprehension questions. They write a summary about what they book was...
Curated OER
Learning To Summarize
In this learning to summarize worksheet, students interactively answer 10 multiple choice questions about summarizing information from a given passage, then click to check their answers.
Curated OER
Here Ye! Here Ye! Read All About It!
Fourth graders explore the internet to find articles to read. In this reading comprehension lesson, 4th graders take notes on articles found on the internet. Students use the writing process to summarize the selected articles.
Curated OER
Knocked Out by Trout
Students work in pairs and read an article about the pacific tree frogs being knocked out by the nonnative trout. In this invasive species activity, students create a graphic organizer to record their findings. Once the students are...
Curated OER
Statistical Pictures of School and Life
Students explore how mathematical data is used to summarize and illustrate everyday life. They apply mathematical concepts and skills to analyze data. Students conduct a five question survey of 50 people or more and graph the data.
Curated OER
Ten Cents a Word
Students recognize the importance of summarizing in this lesson. They "sum up" an article about monarch butterflies. Students practice writing summaries of the article charging themselves 10 cents/word. They try to write the least...