How To Teach Summarizing to Students: 15 Strategies To Try

Summarizing is a tricky skill for students to learn. They have to condense the main idea of a text into a shorter version using their own words while leaving out unnecessary details, examples, or opinions. Yet, this is a foundational skill students need to support reading comprehension, critical thinking, communication, and overall academic success.

Repeated practice can be key when considering how to teach summarizing to your students. We have a list of 15 strategies that you can incorporate into your lessons to allow students to summarize content at multiple points throughout a lesson.

• 15 strategies to teach summarizing to students
• Summarizing FAQs

[15 strategies to teach summarizing to students](id-tips)

You can use multiple strategies to teach summarizing on one text or try a new method for each new text your students read. Explore these strategies to help you teach and practice summarizing with your students:

1. Create opportunities for students to do multiple readings

The more familiar you are with a text, the easier it is to summarize. One way to ensure students become familiar with their texts is to have them reread to build deeper comprehension. Have your students reread texts with a different purpose each time. For example, you may have them:

1. Skim the text to identify the topic or main idea.
2. Read and highlight information that supports the topic or main idea.
3. Reread to find and define unfamiliar vocabulary words.

This approach helps build deeper comprehension.

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Newsela Knack: Our products offer AI-powered checks for understanding embedded throughout informational and news texts to encourage close reading.

2. Teach narrative text structure

You can teach students how to identify narrative text structure before you teach them how to summarize. Narrative text structure is most commonly found in fictional stories, which typically feature clear beginnings, middles, and endings. 

A story with this structure has clear stopping points to pause, summarize, and check for understanding. It’s also a text structure that even your youngest students are likely familiar with before they enter your classroom.

Teaching narrative text structure helps students break down texts into smaller chunks, a crucial skill for summarizing. It also helps students with their organizational skills and teaches them how to organize and explain their thoughts in a chronological order.  

This Beginning-Middle-End (BME) strategy focuses explicitly on essential details at key points in the story. It helps students narrow down the whole story into major key events. Some questions you may ask when using the BME method include:

• Who are the main characters?
• What is the setting or context?
• What happened at the beginning/middle/end of the story?
• What problems are the main characters trying to solve?
• What do the main characters think or feel about this problem?

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Newsela Knack: To make the concept stick, use our plot diagram graphic organizer and explainer videos.

3. Introduce and reinforce relevant key terms

The main idea and key details are two important vocabulary words students should know when learning to summarize. The main idea is a one-sentence summary of the point of the text. Key details are the important facts and opinions that explain or support the main idea. Finding the main idea and key details is often taught as a separate skill, before introducing summarizing.

It’s essential to use these key terms when teaching summarizing and to remind students of their definitions. Though these are their own literacy skills, students can—and should—practice all three together. When teaching summarizing, you can ask questions like:

• What is the main idea of this text?
• What key details did the author include to support the main idea?
• Are there any unnecessary details included for more information?

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Newsela Knack: Our explainer videos and updated Standards and Skills collection provide the resources you need to teach and reinforce these concepts, making them stick for students.

4. Change your questions

Teaching relevant vocabulary and definitions is important, but sometimes, students need a different approach. Try rewording your questions to encourage students to think more critically about the information they share in a summary.

Rather than saying, “Summarize this paragraph,” you may ask questions like:

• What happened to the main character in this chapter?
• What do you think the author wants us to remember about this paragraph?

You’re still asking students to summarize by rephrasing the question, but you can get more specific about the information you want them to share. This can help them create future summaries independently because you’ve already prompted them on what types of information to look for in a text.

5. Teach the 5Ws (and 1H)

Summarizing pulls out the most important information from the text, and that information usually answers these six questions:

1. Who?
2. What?
3. When?
4. Where?
5. Why?
6. How?

These questions guide students to focus on core facts without including unnecessary details. You can use our summarizing worksheet to help students record this information for any text. This strategy may be most effective for nonfiction and informational texts; however, students can also use these questions to summarize fictional works. 

Let’s look at how this strategy works with the article “Time Machine (1892): The first immigrants arrive at Ellis Island” from our ELA Resources for Independence Day collection.

After reading the article, students can pull out the details that answer each question. Their responses may look something like this:

• Who: Annie Moore (Irish Immigrant)
• What: Processing people at the immigration station
• When: January 1, 1892
• Where: Ellis Island
• Why: To welcome immigrants from two ships through the port and into the new immigration station
• How: By processing people through 10 aisles with registry clerks, detaining those with illnesses, and sending others to the right buildings to get where they’re going.

With this information, students have all the details they need to write a summary. An example summary may look like this:

• Annie Moore, an Irish immigrant, was the first person processed through the Ellis Island immigration stations on January 1, 1892. The new station opened to welcome immigrants from two boats through the port, process them through 10 aisles, detain those with illnesses, and send others to the right buildings to find where they’re going next.

6. Use the “Somebody wanted but so then” scaffold

The “Somebody wanted but so then” (SWBST) strategy is similar to the 5Ws and 1H method, which encourages students to identify the most important aspects of a story. 

The difference between the two is that by answering each part of this prompt, students have an almost complete sentence to use as their summary. In the 5Ws and 1H strategy, they only have the building blocks to write their own sentences. 

The five prompts students complete include:

• Somebody: Who is the main character or narrator of the text?
• Wanted: What did that somebody want to do?
• But: What was the problem?
• So: How did that somebody solve the problem?
• Then: What was the conclusion of the story?

This framework is ideal for summarizing fiction, and it simplifies which details students should include or exclude in their summary. It also mirrors the plot diagram, which helps students ensure their summary follows the story arc.

Let’s look at how this strategy may help students summarize Aesop’s Fable, “The City Mouse and the Country Mouse,” from our K-2 ELA collection. After students read the fable, they may answer each prompt like this:

• Somebody: Country Mouse and City Mouse
• Wanted: To have a meal together
• But: City Mouse thought Country Mouse didn’t have fancy enough food
• So: They went back to the city to eat rich mouse food and had to hide from the cat and dog
• Then: Country Mouse decided to go home and eat in peace

You can then teach students how to split this information into a few simpler sentences for a summary that looks like this:

• Country Mouse and City Mouse wanted to have a meal together. But City Mouse thought Country Mouse didn’t have fancy enough food. So they went back to the city to eat rich mouse food and had to hide from the cat and dog. Then, Country Mouse decided to go home and eat in peace.

7. Try the 3-2-1 Strategy

In the 3-2-1 strategy, students record three things they learned from reading a text, two things they found interesting, and one question they still have about the material. You can use this strategy at any time during a lesson to check for understanding, start discussions, or provide an exit ticket to see if students understood the lesson.

Variations of this strategy include:

• Compare and Contrast 3-2-1: Includes similarities, differences, and a question
• Reading 3-2-1: Includes important ideas, supporting details, and a question
• Pyramid 3-2-1: Includes things learned, questions, and applicability to daily life
• Academic Vocabulary 3-2-1: Includes a conversation, sentences, and a reading paragraph

No matter which version of the 3-2-1 strategy you choose, the framework helps students break down lengthier pieces of text into more manageable ideas, thoughts, and questions. It can help them identify the main idea and key details, and start to formulate a summary in their own words.

8. Use selective underlining and annotations

Annotating and selective underlining are methods students can use to take notes while reading a text. Either strategy encourages students to highlight or underline key terms, facts, people, and events. 

This strategy helps students learn to identify what information is relevant, but it may be tricky for them to understand at first. They’ll often start by highlighting or underlining too much information or not enough. Modeling how to annotate texts correctly can help.

Using the 5Ws and 1H as a guide is also helpful. When students know specific information to look for or highlight, it can reduce extraneous markings. In addition to highlighting important information, you may also teach students to cross out extraneous details (in pencil in case they make a mistake!).

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Newsela Knack: Our annotation feature supports this type of highlighting for both teachers and students. You can model how to annotate selectively and highlight the most important text information. Then, students can use the feature independently while reading to help them summarize the content.

9. Use the SAAC Method

The SAAC Method helps students summarize any kind of text, whether it’s a fictional story, an article, a speech, or something else. The acronym stands for each item the students address when writing their summaries:

• State: Give the name of the article, book, or story
• Assign: Give the author’s name
• Action: What is the author or main character doing?
• Complete: Finish the sentence with the main idea and key details.

This method can help students start a short summary by getting key information included up front in the first sentence.

10. Give a non-example

To help students recognize a good summary, you can compare it with a bad one. For example, you may create two summaries for a text. One should purposely have extraneous information, or be too long, or confusing. 

You can project both summaries for the whole class to see during group instruction. Or you can share copies of both summaries with students one-to-one. After reading and reviewing both, have students discuss which summary is better and why. This activity helps students improve clarity and conciseness in their writing summaries.

11. Revise summaries

Another strategy to help the concept stick is to have students revise their own summaries. Have them read a text three times to write an initial summary and revise it twice.

Ask students to write a summary after the first reading. It may be long and contain more information than necessary. After the second reading, ask students to cut their summaries by two sentences. With more exposure to the text, they may locate and remove extraneous details.

After the final reading, ask them to reduce their summaries to one to three sentences. With this last push, they should be able to reduce the summary to just the most important information. If students have difficulty cutting sentences, do a refresher lesson on key details to help them decide what to keep and what to erase.

12. Put a price on each word

The GIST or Word Limit Challenge gives students a spending limit when writing their summaries. For example, tell students they can spend $20 on each summary and that each word costs $1. This means their summary can’t be more than 20 words, and they’ll have to get creative to write one under that limit.

You can adjust all the factors in this activity to make it easier or more challenging. For example, you may increase or decrease the cost of each word or the amount students have to spend. Adjusting the parameters can help you scaffold the skill and gradually teach students how to create shorter summaries.

13. Summarize more than text

Though we teach this skill in ELA classrooms, students can summarize nearly any information they encounter. It’s not a skill confined to written texts. Other things students can summarize include:

• Speeches
• Lectures
• Digital media, like TV episodes or movies
• Plays
• Songs

If students just aren’t “getting it” when summarizing a text, try taking the skill off the page. Show them an old (student-appropriate!) commercial, TV clip, or Newsela interactive video. Ask them to summarize what they see and hear. 

After students create their summaries, talk about how they chose which information to include. Use this as an opportunity to apply the skill across different formats and show them the same techniques they used to find the key information in visual media also apply to finding it when they’re reading.

14. Try illustrated summaries

For early readers still learning how to write, ask them to create illustrated summaries to practice the skill. Illustrated summaries still include information from the 5Ws and 1H, but show that information in pictures instead of words. 

Have students draw the story's main character, setting, problem, and other important details. Then, they can narrate their visual summary aloud to the class, a peer group, or one-on-one with another student. You can also guide their oral summaries by introducing the “Somebody wanted but so then” framework.

15. Rely on graphic organizers

Graphic organizers can help students identify relevant and irrelevant information and organize it for a summary. T-charts can help students separate ideas into “important” and “not important” categories. Pyramids that contain information, such as the main idea or cause-and-effect relationships, can help students visualize what information should come first in a summary.

16. Model, model, model

Constant modeling is one of the best techniques you can use to teach students how to summarize. You can incorporate summary modeling into any lesson or subject.

After you read a text as a class, model how to find the main idea. Show students how to separate key details from extraneous information. Teach them to do things like underlining, highlighting, or taking notes while reading a passage. The more you can show students how to do the skill, the easier it becomes for them to replicate your strategies for themselves. 

Modeling also includes showing examples of summaries in the texts students read. Some examples include:

• In textbooks, at the beginning or end of a new chapter.
• On the backs or inside covers of books in your classroom or school library.

[Summarizing FAQs](id-faq)

Still have questions about how to teach summarizing to your students? We have answers!

What are the fundamental steps students need to know to summarize a text effectively?

Before students can use any of the summarizing strategies and techniques we’ve shared, they need to be able to follow the steps to summarize effectively. These include:

• Read the text carefully: Students need to fully comprehend the material by reading or listening to it attentively. Rereading or re-listening to the text can help.
• Identify main ideas and key details: Students should ask, “What is this text about?” to find its main idea. Underlining, highlighting, or annotating important information can help.
• Remove irrelevant information: Students should leave out information that’s repetitive or doesn’t connect to the main idea. Crossing out content, erasing it, or highlighting or annotating these details in a different color can help.
• Rephrase in your own words: Students put the main ideas and key details of the passage into their own words.
• Review and refine: Students should reread their summary and ensure that it’s concise, accurate, and written in their own words.

What are some tips to make teaching summarizing more effective?

To make summarizing stick for your students, try these practical teaching tips:

Scaffold for diverse learners

Scaffolding this skill can help students learn how to summarize while accounting for their individual learning needs. Start with shorter, simpler texts to build confidence. You can also provide sentence stems and frames, like we shared in some of the strategies above, to help students create their oral and written summaries.

For English Language Learners (ELLs), specifically, consider using modifications such as partner activities, visual aids, or dual-language texts to help them learn the skill while also learning English.

Leverage familiar mentor texts

Use stories that students already know well to help them focus on building their summarizing skills rather than struggling with comprehension. Fairy tales, picture books, and previously read books are great options for familiar mentor texts.

You can also use a single mentor text that you revisit throughout the year to build a reference point when teaching summarizing.

Provide consistent practice

To truly learn how to summarize, students need repeated practice throughout the year and across subjects. Incorporate summarizing into daily classroom activities, such as bell ringers, exit tickets, and other projects. Have students reread texts with different purposes to build deeper comprehension before they create summaries.

How can I make summary activities more engaging?

Consistent practice is key to building summarizing skills, but doing the same thing over and over may get boring for them. But it doesn’t have to! Try some of these creative summary activities to keep skill-building engaging:

• Write headlines: Have students create newspaper headlines that capture the main idea of a text.
• Graphic novel summary: Have students summarize a short text by creating graphic novel panels for the main idea and key details. 
• Summary Roller Coaster: Have students plot positive and negative events from a story in chronological order above and below a horizontal line and connect them visually.
• “What’s Missing?” Activity: Provide prewritten summaries with an element missing, like one of the 5Ws and 1H or the SWBST categories, and challenge students to identify and add the missing piece.

Teach summarizing with Newsela

With over 18,000 texts across 20+ genres, Newsela’s products provide all the content you could ever need to teach your students about summarizing. 

With Newsela ELA, you can enhance reading comprehension and summarizing skills by strengthening key literacy skills, such as identifying the main idea and locating key details. With Newsela Social Studies and Newsela Science, you can use even more texts and scaffolds to practice summarizing texts across subjects outside of ELA. 

Not a Newsela customer yet? You can experience all the content and skill-building activities our products have to offer by signing up for Newsela Lite and starting a free 45-day trial of our premium products for your classroom today.