Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Topic:Outline for Summarizing



10-second review: How to teach young children to summarize

Title: “Story Structure and Comprehension.” B Feinerman. Reading Teacher (October 1979), 64-65.

Summary: The four steps to summarizing a story read by the teacher to young students:
. Where and when the story takes place, the main characters
. The problem
.How the problem is solved
. How the story ends

Example of a summary composed by children of a story read by the teacher:

“Long ago there lived three hungry goats named Gruff who had no grass left on their hill. They wanted to cross a bridge to get to grazing grass, but a mean old troll who wanted to eat them lived under the bridge. One by one the goats trip—trapped over the bridge until finally Big Billy and the troll came face to face in a terrible fight. The goat won the match and the brothers ate their fill of that fat, juicy grass.”

Comment: Might be a good outline for a summary by older students of stories and novels they have read. It’s also a good outline for writing short stories in creative writing. RayS.

No comments: