Hello everyone!
So excited to be linking up for my second bright ideas post! ๐
This time, I’ll be sharing with you something that I use to help my kids work on summarizing!
This concept is difficult for all learners at any age, because the material that they are given to work with becomes more difficult as they become better readers. I work with primary learners and it is particularly difficult for them. I’d like to share a strategy that has made it a bit easier for them to distinguish between retelling and just giving me the main idea of a passage.
I first used this strategy with intermediate learners that understood the concept of money. Each word of their main idea statement was represented by a dime, and they would add up how much money their summary was worth. Once they understood the concept, they used their fingers to count to twenty, rather than chips.
When I am first introducing the strategy, I read a piece of text in small group with the students. We discuss what the main idea is together. Later, I do a whole group book or section of text…and now, students do it themselves in pairs as a part of their center time.
There are TONS of different options for this. You can have the students create a grid on their desks. I suggest using black expo markers…as opposed to colored ones. They clean up so much easier! ๐
You can create a grid on piece of paper and slip it into a pocket chart if you’d like the students to mark the grids with an X as opposed to using manipulatives.
I like to give my kids something to put in each square as they are telling the main idea. It makes it more fun for them! ๐ (With primary learners they have to have a good sense of what a word is before you attempt this strategy.)
They usually try to get as many ‘chips’ as they can on each grid. Once they get really good at it, I will make the grids smaller. I go down to 15 and then to 10.
I hope that you’ll try a two dollar summary with your learners! ๐
It has really helped my kids to synthesize their thoughts and put only what is most important into their summary of the text that they’ve read.
I hope you’ll check out Crystal’s post over at Kreative in Kinder! ๐
Click her button below to go right to her page! ๐
