Lesson 8: Summarizing Information

If you're looking to set your class up for writing effective arguments, try out this idea. While originally created with freedom as a guiding idea, the activity could easily be adapted for other themes. As a class, create a chart of...

Help learners find the most important information in a text with a lesson on summarizing. As kids read through a passage about Johannes Gutenberg, they summarize small excerpts, put events in sequential order, and respond to two longer...

What's the difference between summarizing and paraphrasing? Show class members how to find the main ideas from informational text and condense it, restate it, or quote it directly with a series of educational activities based on two...

The eighth lesson plan in this series continues the focus on vocabulary and increasing young readers' awareness of academic language. Pairs of learners participate in a short vocabulary review activity called Interactive Words in which...

How skilled are your class members at summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting from a text? Find out with this assessment that asks readers to identify the thesis statement, the summary, the paraphrases, and the quoted material in an...

Introduce class members to summarizing using a think, pair, share activity and KWL charts. After modeling how to determine the who, what, where, why, and how of an article, groups practice summarizing with two provided articles about...

Gather some information, print it onto sentence strips, and then have your class physically shuffle the cards to better understand the importance of organizational patterns in writing. Middle school learners examine information for a...

Learners explore persuasive writing. In this middle lesson of a series of lessons on persuasive writing, students reread their beginning paragraph and evaluate its content. Learners read and critique a sample 6th grade essay as a whole...

Read an article about the migration of our ancestors and write a paragraph. Pupils paraphrase and summarize to restate the information found in a nonfiction text. They write a shortened version of the reading to demonstrate the...

Having a firm grasp on organization can help young authors write with purpose. Using this resource, they list the components of a narrative which include an introduction, body, and strong conclusion. They discuss how to implement these...