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26 Writing Summaries

Page
181
from

Writing Summaries Opening Page

Start-Up Activity

Have students page through a typical chapter (or a section from a chapter) from either a science or social studies textbook. Tell them that the subject of this All Write chapter—writing a summary—will help them remember the main ideas from their other academic texts. Then ask a volunteer to read page 181 of All Write aloud. In your discussion of this page, it might be helpful to compare the summary of a written text to the box score of a baseball game, which serves as a summary of the game. Ask students if they can think of comparable summaries (recipes, parts of manuals, brief reviews, etc.).

Think About It

“The safest words are always those which bring us most directly to fact.”

 

—Charles H. Parkhurst

Page 182 from All Write

Writing Guidelines: Summaries

As you review the guidelines on page 182, use the sample editorial on page 154 of All Write to model the summary-writing process. First, use a line diagram to gather the main ideas from the editorial. Note that graphic organizers can help your students, particularly English Language Learners, to collect and arrange the main ideas in a text. Then use the information you gathered in the line diagram to model writing a summary. Before writing the first draft of your summary, you may want to share with students the sample summary on page 184.

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NE ELA Standard:

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Page 183 from All Write

Finding the Main Idea

During your discussion of this page, point out that the main idea is the focus of the text, like a topic sentence in a paragraph or a thesis statement in a longer text. Share with students a variety of texts (an essay, a news story, a Web site, etc.). As a class, use page 183 as a guide to identify the main idea of each one.

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TEKS Standard:
NE ELA Standard:

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Form:
21st Century Skills:
English Language Arts:

Page 184 from All Write

Sample Summary

First, ask for a volunteer to read the original reading selection. Then with the help of other students, identify the main idea and key details in the article. Next, ask another volunteer to read the summary at the bottom of the page. Compare the information in the summary with your collecting. Does the summary contain more or less information than you identified?

LAFS Standard:
TEKS Standard:
NE ELA Standard:

Related Resource Tags

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Form:
21st Century Skills:
English Language Arts: