Summing up - Summarizing

Summary
The first section of the reading is based on Milne?s poem and is for full class discussion. The story following is for individual reading and is the basis of two of the activities.

Objectives
• The children will be able to identify the main ideas in oral or written text.

• The children will be able to retell a short story in their own words.

Suggested Grades
2nd Grade
3rd Grade
4th Grade

Excerpt
Activities A and B offer practice in identifying the main idea in a written or oral text. Activity C gives the children the opportunity to summarize the story by focusing on the most important elements.

What is the poem about? What is the most important thing it is telling us? That the poet?s beetle ran away! If you wanted to tell the story to someone, you could say something like: I had a beetle, which I kept in a matchbox, and then Nanny let him out and he ran away. This is called summarizing, or making a summary. Summarizing means finding the most important ideas and leaving out the details, like the beetle?s name; that it answered to Alexander and that the poet had kept it all day.

Continued...