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Handout
1
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Curated OER

Summarizing with Somebody Wanted But So

For Teachers 3rd - 6th Standards
Teach your young readers how to summarize a text using a strategy called Somebody Wanted But So. Kids identify the character (Somebody), the motivation (Wanted), the conflict (But), and the resolution (So). The resource comes with...
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Printables
Polk Bros Foundation

Comprehensive Nonfiction Reading Questions

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Analyze any nonfiction text with the set of questions on this sheet. Class members practice inferring by noting the main idea and purpose of a passage. They also analyze an opinion in the passage and write a brief summary. See the...
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Lesson Plan
K20 LEARN

Summarizing and Sorting Details from an Informational Text: Identifying the Main Idea

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
Scholars participate in two activities that teach them to identify the main idea and key supporting details in informational text. Partners create a visual that reflects the main idea and key supporting details in an informational text...
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Worksheet
E Reading Worksheets

Summarization and Narrative Sequence

For Students 5th - 7th
Readers are asked to identify seven important events in a narrative and then to explain why these events are key to the story. To conclude the activity, kids craft a summary using their list.
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Lesson Plan
EngageNY

Building Background Knowledge and Summarizing: “Refugees: Who, Where, Why” Part 2

For Teachers 8th Standards
What are some universal aspects of refugees' experiences worldwide and throughout history? Scholars read the text "Refugees: Who, Where, Why" and create two class anchor charts. Finally, they each write a paragraph that provides an...
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Lesson Plan
EngageNY

Summarizing Informational Text: “Hawaii’s Endangered Happy Face Spider”

For Teachers 5th Standards
Put on a happy face. Using an interesting resource, pupils read an informational text about Hawaii's endangered Happy Face Spider. Next, they participate in a jigsaw discussion to find the gist of the article. 
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Assessment
1
1
Fluence Learning

Writing Informational Text: Lemonade Stand

For Students 3rd Standards
Use a performance task to assess third graders' ability to read informational text. After they plan a lemonade stand business, young entrepreneurs implement that plan through informational writing. The task assumes learners can...
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Lesson Plan
EngageNY

Mid-Unit Assessment: Analyzing an Author’s Argument and Text Structure

For Teachers 8th Standards
William Shakespeare: a writer, a poet, a fake? For their mid-unit assessments, scholars read an excerpt from the article "The Top Ten Reasons Shakespeare Did Not Write Shakespeare" by Keir Cutler. Next, they analyze the author's argument...
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Lesson Plan
EngageNY

Explaining the Relationships between Events in a Historical Text: Contextualizing the History of Baseball (pages 8–9, 25)

For Teachers 5th Standards
In other words ... it's time to give a summary. Scholars work with a partner to paraphrase a timeline card referring to Promises to Keep. They then work to merge the two timelines to create one timeline. Pupils finish by writing a...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Short and Sweet Science

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Readers learn how to summarize scientific text and evaluate the advantages, disadvantages, and challenges in writing summaries. They select science-related articles you've pulled and collected from the New York Times and, with a partner,...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Short But Sweet

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
After analyzing and evaluating news summaries found in the New York Times "Week in Review" section, middle schoolers study the steps for summarizing a news article briefly and accurately. They write two news summaries: one on a newspaper...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Secrets of the Mummies

For Teachers 3rd - 6th
How did the ancient people of Egypt preserve their dead so well that their bodies are still recognizable today? Learn the painstakingly complex process they used for preservation. Young scholars read and summarize a narrative detailing...
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Organizer
Polk Bros Foundation

I Can Analyze a Story or History Completely and Carefully

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
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...
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Website
University of North Carolina

Summary: Using it Wisely

For Students 9th - Higher Ed Standards
Sometimes summarizing keeps a writer from going deeper into their analysis—don't fall into that trap. Learn the difference between summarizing and analyzing using an insightful resource. Focusing on introductions, the lesson shares...
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Activity
College Board

The Departure

For Teachers 8th Standards
Scholars learn about the Hero's Journey as they read Ray Bradbury's "The Drummer Boy of Shiloh." They analyze the story's structure and narrative techniques. Finally, they write summaries of the text's central idea and use their...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Let's Summarize!

For Teachers 1st - 3rd
Students, after brainstorming what summarization is, practice the strategy of summarization to help pick out the important parts of text each time they read. They read and summarize the article, "10 Cool Things About Dolphins," from the...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Whittle, Whittle it Down: Summarizing

For Teachers 6th
Sixth graders are introduced to the jigsaw method of summarizing text. In groups, they create their own summary and work together as a class to create just one class summary. To end the lesson, they read the class summary and review the...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Summarizing: James and the Giant Peach

For Teachers 4th - 5th
Text marking and a T-chart format to distinguish important information from trivia help elementary readers summarize effectively. Encouraging readers to construct a chapter summary from paragraph-level topic sentences is another sound...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Main Idea in Informational Text

For Teachers 3rd - 4th
Readers identify main ideas and supporting details using informational texts. In this literacy lesson, they make predictions and read the text to find the main ideas. They use a table diagram to define the main idea and supporting...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Summarizing Details in Sequence

For Teachers 7th - 8th
Seventh graders write a few sentences explaining the most important events of their lives during the past year. As a class, they discuss why they chose the elements they did for their sentences. To end the lesson, they read a variety of...
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Lesson Plan
5
5
National Math + Science Initative

Reading an Informational Text: "It All Started with Sputnik"

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
Sputnik was one of the greatest scientific advancements of the 1950s, and this reading lesson does it justice. Pupils start off with pre-reading questions and a video. They then read an excerpt from an article, which is accompanied by...
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Lesson Plan
EngageNY

Analyzing Text Structure: To Kill a Mockingbird (Chapter 2)

For Teachers 8th Standards
Scholars use the Narrative Structure graphic organizer to analyze the structure of the smaller stories within To Kill a Mockingbird. They talk with a partner to discuss how the structure adds meaning.
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Summarization Mapping

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students observe and demonstrate the strategy of summarizing the main idea. They discuss six rules of summarizing, and observe the teacher summarizing the first chapter of the novel "The Incredible Journey." Students then read chapter...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Only the Facts

For Teachers 1st - 4th
Practice the strategy of summarizing to gain meaning and knowledge from an informational text. Young readers highlight supporting details and main ideas, and then they use this to summarize two articles: "The Great Quake" and "What is an...

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