Summaries are something every teacher does year after year to introduce and then to reinforce the skill. After all, it is a backbone writing skill that applies to all subjects, not just ELA. But summary writing is difficult for students… and teachers too! My way around these difficulties is to use a mixture of activities repeatedly throughout the year.
Like most of you, I start with an introductory lesson that covers the basics – the goal and role of a summary. I incorporate a variety of texts and exemplars often using student work from previous years or even, with senior students, using abstracts from scholarly journal articles as examples of summary writing. From that introductory lesson, the goal is always to come back time and again to practice the skill but without the activity growing stale. So here are five activities to support summary writing in your middle school and high school English classrooms!
The Classics
These are the activities that are part of a regular rotation that can be used with any and all texts to practice summary writing. These are ones that students are likely familiar with and are therefore comfortable with doing. These could be used as a way for students to tackle more challenging texts; in this way, their discomfort isn’t with both sides of the work – the text AND the summary.
Somebody… Wanted… But… So… Then.
To work on summaries of fiction and non-fiction alike this tried and true method is a great option. Somebody (figure – character or subject) wanted (goal or motivation) but (conflict, twist, dilemma) so / then (resolution or outcome). If you’re looking for a quick bell ringer activity this is a good one to summarize the text from a previous class to refresh students’ minds or to use a new short media piece to start the day that relates to the lesson to come and to sneak in this summary practice too.
Hey Big Spender
This is where financial literacy meets writing skills… kind of! I have a stash of coins for class and use them for this activity as a way to give students something tangible to use while writing. An alternative is to simply present the budget-task-cost breakdown on the board and have students write a summary of a text. (I will often use short films and you can check out a list of 12 Short, Short Films for ELA that could work for this activity and many more!)
Budget: $1
Task: Write a summary.
Costs: Each word costs 5 (or 10) cents depending on how short you’d like students to go.
The Twists
Now on the flip side, these three activities are ones that are a bit outside the box in terms of summary writing. But thinking outside the box is exactly the goal since keeping summary practice a bit fresh is ideal. No one wants to write summary after summary and no teacher wants to read summary after summary. Instead, these three activities provide a quick and easy way to practice summaries. And the bonus here is these don’t need to be collected by the teacher, you can use peer-to-peer review for students to reflect and to assess their work.
Boil it Down Poetry
This a great minds’ on or practice activity for summary writing. You can do this in one of two ways: Provide students with a passage of 75-100 words from a news article or even a work of fiction and have them go through and cut out the words that don’t matter. They eventually whittle the passage down to 10-15 words that summarize the text. For this warm-up I don’t worry about creating a perfectly grammatical summary; instead, the focus is on picking out the big idea and using as little to share that idea as possible.
This can also work as a great reverse use activity. Have students share their boil it down poems about a particular article or story with their classmates and have them discuss or respond in written form about what it’s all about.
In my classroom I’ve done this with articles that relate to the main text we may be studying and include 2-3 different texts for students to work with. In this way you can mix and match students so they’re exposed to a different article through their classmates’ boil it down poems. Plus I have found this works wonders for accountability!
You can find this ready-made poetry activity here.
Blackout Poetry
Similar to the activity above this one uses an activity you might already use in your class but this shifts its usual goal. It may seem unconventional but consider this a great way to have students pick out the key words and uncover the main idea of a text.
For this version of blackout poetry rather than looking simply to create a poem that is unrelated to the source text, students focus on the text’s meaning. Students pick out the keywords and phrases that support the main idea of the article to create a summary poem.
A next step with this activity is to share with classmates who have read the same text. The act of comparing here provides a chance to check work that doesn’t require a teacher to collect and assess. With students reading each other’s work it often becomes clear who is on target and who has missed the mark.
Picture It!
The last activity I like to use is shifting to drawing. This is not actually about the artwork – I’m a person who is only just okay at drawing stick people so it’s definitely not about the artwork! Instead, the focus here is similar to sketchnotes or doodles to summarize. Students read a passage or whole text (preferably on the shorter side – news articles are great for this) and then draw the main point of the text. This is also a chance to put down the pens and pencils and pick up the markers, crayons, or colored pencils to draw away in a lower key activity that’s still high impact.
Make it an extra challenge by decreasing the size of the paper students have to draw their summary. Start with 8.5 x 11, then to half a page, then to a sticky-note. This could be with the same text that reappears and so as students are more familiar with the text they’re able to summarize even more succinctly!
Take it to another level and have students read a series of short texts and create their picture summaries. Then do a gallery walk with the different images – names removed – and, since students will have read each text, have them try to identify which picture matches which text. This also works as an accountability piece too so it’s a win-win!
Looking for more writing activities for your middle or high school English classroom? Check out these posts:
The Best Ways to Hook Students on Writing
Creative Strategies to Teach Reading and Writing
How do you support your students with summary writing? Any tips or tricks to share? Let us know in the comments or share with us on Facebook or Instagram.
