This article focuses on how to help teachers write lesson plans that will aid students in learning to write clear, concise summaries of movies and literary works.

This lesson focuses on teaching high school students to write a movie summary that provides a plot summary without sharing too much of the storyline but includes the following: brevity, conflict, theme, tone, and persuades others to want...

Interesting online lesson that offers a twist on the traditional book report. Young scholars use bookmarks online to justify their preferences and offer analysis of text; they use summaries and symbols to write and analyze.

Inspired by the picture book How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long, an enthusiastic tale that explores the pros and cons of being a pirate, students will research an interesting job and prepare to write about it. While researching, the...

This multi-day jigsaw activity engages students in summary writing. Students will work in small groups after direct instruction and write short summary paragraphs. Students will refer to the 'Five Rules For Writing a Summary' chart for...

This Indiana University of Pennsylvania Writing Center site provides tips to writing a strong conclusion to an essay. The article discusses incorporating an anecdote, a basic summary, a startling summary, famous ideas, and/or hints to...

Although this lesson focuses on college writing, it fits perfectly into the high school curriculum without being too difficult to understand. It provides types of essay writing assignments and how to handle each, strategies for writing...

This ReadWriteThink lesson features an opportunity for students to respond to literature through writing journals about "Corduroy," by Don Freeman. This idea could be used with other books as well.

Lesson that introduces students to the comprehension technique of summarizing. Students learn using the QuIP (questions into paragraphs) method which involves organizing information and putting it in writing.

This site presents information about the necessary parts of a scientific research report. It also contains a sample abstract and introduction.

In this interdisciplinary lesson, students examine the artwork in Lasceaux Cave in France via Internet and illustrate a chapter summary from Brian's Winter by Gary Paulson in "caveman style."

This detailed site provides a guide for reading "The Pioneers" by James Fenimore Cooper. Includes background information about the book, a description of the setting and form, a list and description of principal characters, and...

Here's a site from the Capital Community College to show the correct and incorrect way to use or not use commas.

Inspired by Barry Lane's book 51 Wacky We-Search Reports, in this cross-curricular lesson, students learn how to summarize properly.

Inspired by Barry Lane's book 51 Wacky We-Search Reports, in this cross-curricular lesson young scholars learn how to summarize properly.

Inspired by Barry Lane's book 51 Wacky We-Search Reports, in this cross-curricular instructional activity students learn how to summarize properly.

Inspired by Barry Lane's book 51 Wacky We-Search Reports, in this cross-curricular lesson young scholars learn how to summarize properly.

Inspired by Barry Lane's book 51 Wacky We-Search Reports, in this cross-curricular lesson learners learn how to summarize properly.

In this lesson, students will engage in this post-reading strategy for a nonfiction or a fiction piece. Each student will take notes on a four-square square graphic organizer about something they already knew, something they found...

This Daily Teaching Tools resource provides a series of graphic organizers. Students will be able to plan the writing of summaries, paragraphs, and literary responses.

This is an assignment to write a detailed 850-word explication over one of two passages in Shakespeare's Othello. In the assignment, he explains what an explication is and is not and how to go about writing one. He also explains exactly...

[Free Registration/Login Required] This is a film guide to the Into version of Shakespeare's The Tempest, a mystical thriller with a modern twist (available free from intofilm.org). It provides a short summary, prereading and...

Students research the feasibility of installing a wind-turbine distributed energy (DE) system for their school. They write a proposal (actually, the executive summary of a proposal) to the school principal based on their findings and...

This site provides the full text of Dickens' "Bleak House." A brief summary is also included.