Summarizing a Text Read Aloud

1. Read aloud, once, at normal pace: "Mia's class planted bean seeds in paper cups in March. For two weeks nothing happened, and some students gave up checking. Then one Monday every cup had a green hook pushing out of the soil. By May the plants were taller than the window ledge, and the class ate the beans at their end-of-year picnic."
2. Ask three students for a one-sentence summary. Write each on the board.
3. Next to each, mark which part it covered: beginning, middle or end. Most will favor the end (the picnic) or one vivid moment (the green hook).
4. Ask: "Did anyone's summary cover the whole thing?" Expect at most one. Say that this is normal, and that today is about why.

1. Hand out the shape sheet. Tell students to watch you fill yours as you read; they do not write yet.
2. Read "The Lighthouse That Walked" aloud, pausing at each paragraph break to write three or four words in the right box. Paragraph 1 (Opening): "For eighty years the lighthouse at Harlow Point stood two hundred meters from the sea. But each winter, storms dragged away a little more of the cliff. By the time the town noticed, the sea was only fifteen meters from the lighthouse door." Paragraph 2 (Middle): "Engineers came up with a plan. Instead of letting the tower fall, they would move it. Workers dug under the base, slid steel beams beneath it, and lifted the whole tower onto rollers. Hydraulic jacks pushed it inland, about one and a half meters at a time. The move took twenty-three days." Paragraph 3 (End): "Today the lighthouse stands three hundred meters from the cliff edge. Engineers say it should be safe for another hundred years. Visitors can still climb the stairs, and a line of stones on the ground marks the path it traveled."
3. Show your notes: Opening — "cliff wearing away, sea close"; Middle — "engineers moved it, rollers, 23 days"; End — "safe now, 300 m inland."
4. Write a summary from the notes: "The lighthouse at Harlow Point was in danger because storms were wearing away the cliff it stood on. Engineers lifted it onto rollers and pushed it inland over twenty-three days. It now stands three hundred meters from the edge and should be safe for a century." Point out: one sentence per box.
5. Now show a weak summary: "Workers dug under it and put steel beams under it and lifted it onto rollers and used jacks to push it and it took twenty-three days. It is safe now." Ask: "What is missing?" Expect: why it had to move. Say: the most interesting part ate the summary.
6. Play your video clip and do the same, noting that images carry information too — if the clip shows a map, the map belongs in a box.

“Three boxes, filled as you listen. If you wait until the end, your summary will be the last minute, or the most exciting minute. The boxes are what make it the whole thing.”

1. Read a second piece aloud while students fill their own shape sheets. Suggested text: "Honeybees cannot see red, but they can see ultraviolet light, which people cannot. Many flowers have ultraviolet patterns on their petals that act like landing strips, guiding the bee to the nectar. Scientists photographed flowers with special cameras and found these hidden lines on sunflowers, marsh marigolds and many others. This helps explain why so few wild flowers that rely on bees are pure red."
2. Students write a three-sentence summary, one sentence per box.
3. Pairs swap and draw a bracket beside each sentence showing which box it came from. Two brackets on the same box means over-weighting; rewrite that sentence to cover the empty box.
4. Ask one pair to read their before-and-after. Expect the first draft to have skipped the opening fact (bees cannot see red) and the final draft to restore it.

“Check your brackets. If two sentences point at the same box, one box is getting more than its share and another is getting nothing.”

1. Students complete the summarizing page. Read the page's passage aloud twice: the first time they only listen, the second time they fill the boxes.
2. Remind them to cross out any word that says what they thought of the piece before they hand it in.

1. Take one summary and have the class hold up one, two or three fingers for each sentence to show which box it covers.