Summarizing Strategies for Literary Text
In this unit, students learn how to use different summarizing strategies to determine the main idea and key details of a literary text. They will use a combination of whole-group instruction and discussion, small-group exploration, and individual application through hands-on and online activities to learn to distinguish between re-telling a story sequentially and recounting the main idea and key details. Through guided practice, they will learn how to discern the most important, relevant ideas in a literary text, how to ignore the immaterial information, and how to succinctly integrate the main idea and key details in a literary text.
Hands-on activities include “Re-Tell TV,” in which small groups have to re-tell fairy tales to their classmates after whole-class read alouds. Students then practice summarizing these re-told shared stories using the Beginning-Middle-End (BME) strategy in order to distinguish between retelling a story and recounting or summarizing the main idea and key details. Students practice the BME strategy in guided, small-group work and independently with the use of summarizing task cards and summarizing worksheets. They practice and reinforce this skill via recordings on Seesaw and sharing feedback with one another about these summaries. Through whole-group and guided exploration, students then learn how to use the Somebody-Wanted-But-So-Then (SWBST) summarizing strategy in their guided reading of literary texts. Students practice the SWBST strategy of summarizing through a hands-on activity in which they must jump through five hula hoops--one for each SWBST component--as they summarize a text or short film, such as Lava by Pixar. They then practice using both the BME and SWBST strategies with task cards and story maps as well as via Seesaw and other online applications. Kahoot interactive trivia games will be used for formative assessments throughout this unit.
*Lesson variation: A corresponding writing unit may include students creating their own fractured fairy tales that include the main story elements and the same summary of key details based upon their summary of the original fairy tale. This can be done independently or in small groups, based upon students’ needs.
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