Internet Academy Resources
Writing A Summary What is a Summary?
A summary is a shortened version of a piece of writing.
- When you summarize a story, you group ideas together and tell just the main points.
- When you summarize a nonfiction article for a report, you express the author’s point of view in your own words by grouping ideas together and including only the main details.
- A good summary introduces the ideas in the same order as the original author.
When you are asked to summarize a piece of writing, follow the general rules listed below and you will be successful.
- Delete details that are trivial or repetitious.
- Take out details that are not very important or ideas that have already been mentioned.
- Collapse lists.
- Group examples, details, actions, or traits into general categories.
For example, eyes, ears, neck, arms, and legs could all be placed in a group called body parts- Use graphic organizers, vocabulary clustering, and outlining techniques to group ideas.
- Use topic sentences.
- Topic sentences announce the main idea telling what a paragraph is about.
- Integrate (pull together) information.
- Use key words, phrases, and topic sentences to write your summary.
- Arrange everything into a first draft that organizes your ideas.
- Polish the summary.
- Revise your first draft.
- Read it aloud to see if it makes sense and flows naturally.
- Do any rethinking and rewriting that is necessary to state your ideas clearly.
How will a summary help me read better? Summarizing will help you:
- Understand and remember information for a test.
- Choose the most interesting information when telling a friend about a good book you read.
- Remember information from the big, thick books you need to read if you want to be a teacher, doctor, lawyer, engineer, librarian, policeman, astronaut, automotive technician, computer programmer, or whatever you choose.
If you learn to summarize well, your friends will start to listen to you when you tell them about that great movie you watched last weekend!
What does a good summary look like?
Little Red Riding Hood
Little Red Riding Hood is a classic fairy tale where good overcomes evil. The curtain opens on a little cottage surrounded by a thick wood. Little Red has been asked by her mom to deliver some goodies to her grandmother who lives on the other side of the big wood.
She has not gone far when she meets The Big Bad Wolf. He tries every trick in his little black book to lure her over to his place. After asking a million questions, he gets the information he needs and devises a plan.
He runs ahead to Little Red’s grandmother’s place. In some versions of the story he eats the grandmother whole and in other versions he just hides her in a closet. Then he puts on her night clothes and climbs in her bed.
Soon Little Red shows up. She takes a hard look at her grandmother who is not really her grandmother at all. She asks the imposter grandmother a million questions about his facial features. Finally the disguised wolf jumps out of the bed and prepares to gobble her up.
In the nick of time, Little Red’s father who is a woodcutter arrives. He takes care of the Big Bad Wolf and frees the grandmother.
As with most fairy tales, there is a lesson to be learned. Don’t talk to strangers—especially if they have a very large nose and wear vintage clothing.
