Marley Maharrey Tupelo Middle School Summaries Marley Maharrey Tupelo Middle School

Summarizing When we summarize, we take larger selections of text and reduce them to their bare essentials. Bare essentials: the gist, the key, the main points worth remembering.

What We Need to Do to Summarize Pull out main ideas Focus on key details Use key words and phrases Break down larger ideas Write only enough to convey the main idea

What We Shouldn't Do Write down everything Write down next to nothing Write way too much Don’t write enough Copy word for word

Summary Frames Focus on structure Narrative Topic-Restriction-Illustration Definition Argumentation Problem/Solution Conversation Marzaon, et al: Classroom Instruction that Works, pages 34-35

Narrative Frame The story takes place in… The main characters are… A problem happens when… The problem is solved when… The story ends when…

Don’t Look Back 1 Sentence Paraphrase One-Word Summaries Quick Summaries Don’t Look Back 1 Sentence Paraphrase One-Word Summaries Refine and Reduce Jones, Lawwill, Wormeli

Refine and Reduce (Cutting it down) Write successively shorter summaries, constantly refining and reducing Begin with half a page, then two paragraphs, then one paragraph, then two or three sentences, then a single sentence

Journalists’ Questions and the GIST (main idea) Who What When Where Why How 20-Word Summary Gardner, Jones, Gray

We are now going to summarize the short story/novel we have studied

Remember these parts of a story and performance CHARACTER – the personality or role played by an actor CONFLICT – opposition between characters DIALOGUE – the word choices used by the author and the enunciation, accent or diction of the actor PLOT – the story, what happens or the sequence of events SETTING – the surroundings or environment in a story THEME – what the play means or the main idea within the play

Exit Card Summaries What did I learn today?