Summarizing text is a balancing act between being brief but thorough. You need to be short and to the point, but also cover all the important details, a task that presents a challenge for many young learners. In this lesson based on the story Piggybook by Anthony Browne, children work in pairs choosing five words that describe the book. These words are then used to create a single sentence stating the main idea of the story, leading into a discussion of the theme of the book.

Concepts

main ideas, central ideas, literary themes, literary elements, reading comprehension, summaries, summarizing

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Additional Tags

summary, summarize, main idea, theme, reading comprehension, summarizing, english language arts

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Pros

• Presentation includes all of the pages from the children's story Piggybook
• Resource is a downloadable PowerPoint file, allowing teachers to edit and revise the presentation to meet the specific needs of their class

Cons

• Scaffolding required to support learners with identifying the theme of a story
• Text in the body of the final slide covers up the title of the slide

Common Core

RL.K.1 RL.K.10 RL.1.1 RL.1.2 RL.2.1 RL.2.2 RL.3.1 RL.3.2