A summary is a brief statement or set of statements used to show how a reader has condensed information to get to the central message of a larger chunk of information. Sometimes this central message is called the gist of the text. A summarization strategy is a set of steps that a student follows to determine the gist of the chunk of information that is being summarized. Different summarization strategies may be required for different types of text and different lengths of text.

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Very few students are proficient at summarizing all the materials they encounter. College students frequently struggle to summarize material in their courses. Many students have not developed the comprehension strategies required to condense what they have read into manageable chunks of information. Summarization requires a reader to distinguish between important, less important, and trivial information and to make a judgment about what are the main ideas and supporting details of the paragraph and topic levels. Judgments about importance are often based on the background knowledge of the reader. As students encounter text in different areas, they need an approach to sort information, and they need to see how individuals with sufficient background knowledge identify important information and summarize. Asking students to read and summarize reading selections without the teacher describing and routinely modeling how to use an appropriate summarization strategy, especially of varying text length, content area, and complexity, will not improve the ability of students to summarize. However, since almost all learning in school requires a student condense and remember what has been read, summarization comprehension strategies are important to teach.

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Some students can read and summarize text fairly well. However, as text becomes more difficult, increases in length, is more inconsiderate, or the student does not have sufficient background knowledge, comprehension will falter, and more deliberate work on summarizing is required. Struggling readers may need instruction and practice in summarizing paragraphs; other students may need instruction and practice in summarizing larger chunks of information. However, if the material becomes more difficult to comprehend, students who previously could summarize multi-paragraph sections, may need to return to more paragraph level summarizing and work up to section summarization and summarization of whole chapters.

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There are several ways of thinking about the types of summarization strategies. One way of thinking about the types of summarization strategies that you might teach in the classroom is by the length of text you want students to understand.

• The Paragraph Summarization Strategy. This strategy focuses on students reading one paragraph at a time, stopping at the end of each paragraph, and then asking some questions to find the main idea and supporting details. Students can tell someone what they think the paragraph is about, or they can write it.


• The Section Summarization Strategy. This strategy focuses on students reading a multi-paragraph section that covers a topic. The student begins by raising questions about what the section might be about. As the students read, they are prompted to make one important summary statement about each paragraph; at the end, they answer the questions they raised as the beginning of the section, state or write a connected summary using the important statements recorded during reading, and then describe how this section relates to the preceding and following sections.
  
  The emphasis of this level of instruction and practice is on the integration on multiple main ideas to identify the significance of the set of ideas as a whole. If the student has difficulty with making paragraph level important statements as part of section summarization, the student is not ready for section summarization. More instruction and practice in paragraph summarization should be provided.


• The Multi-Section Summarization Strategy. This strategy focuses on the type of summarization that is required for report writing. As the student reads each section in a chapter or chapter of a book, he/she makes at least three summarizing important statements. This may not cover all the information in the section or chapter, but it should be enough to help the student remember what the section or chapter was about when the summary report needs to be written. If the report is based on chapters in a narrative text, the statements might focus on what happened at the beginning, middle, or end of the chapter. When the student has finished reading the text, a summary is created using the three importance statements. A paragraph with a topic sentence, at least three supporting sentences, and a closing sentence are created. If the student has trouble with summarizing for report writing, then more instruction and practice in section summarization is provided.

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1. Select paragraph summarization as the best strategy to start with if a significant number of your students struggle with pulling together what they have read after they read a paragraph. Good readers may have developed the skill of fluent paragraph level summarization. They may need to focus on section or multi-section level summarization.


2. Before you start asking students to summarize a paragraph level passage, explain to them the purpose of learning a paragraph summarization strategy. Focus your rationale on the idea that it helps the reader to really think about and remember what the writer wants to communicate.


3. Describe the strategy and make a list of the steps on the overhead or board. Ask students to write the steps and what to do in each step and keep this information in their notes. The critical steps of the strategy you could describe might include these steps:



Step 1: Identify the topic.

Say to yourself, "What is this paragraph about? This paragraph is about ___(say the topic one word or a few words)___."




Step 2: Look for key words in the first sentence and the last sentence.

Look for key words or synonyms for key words that are repeated throughout the paragraph. The key words and the first and last sentence usually focus on the topic.




Step 3: Identify the main idea.

Say to yourself, "What does this paragraph say about ___(Say the topic in one word or a few words)____. It tells that ______(state what you think is the main idea)____.
(To identify the main idea, look at all the statements about the topic and decide what you think the main idea is. Remember to look at the first and last sentence for cues for the main idea.

Tricks:
Ignore unnecessary or trivial information.
(e.g., Who cares if the house is yellow, if the rest of the details are about firemen rescuing the family from the burning house?)
Create one category name for lists of items.
(e.g, Substitute the word "family" for the words: mom, dad, brother, sister, cousin, etc.)
Substitute an overall term for components of an action.
(e.g, Substitute, "They finally went to school." for "They went down the walk and got in the car, They drove down Elm Street and made a right on Oak Street, They could see the school ahead of them. The car pulled up to the front of the building, and they scrambled out of the car. They were at school as last."




Step 4: Prove it!

To prove your main idea, identify two details that support or prove that your main idea is correct.




Step 5: Say it in your own words.

When you decide you have the main idea, use your own words to restate the main idea without changing the meaning. It will help you check your understanding and keep you from simply copying or plagiarizing.




4. After describing the paragraph summarization strategy, model how the strategy should be used on a well-written paragraph. Say each step of the strategy as you model it, so students see where you are as you start and complete each step. Think aloud as you model and explain how you made each decision. Using another paragraph, model the strategy again, and this time begin to ask students to participate in following the steps of paragraph summarizing.


5. Now that students see how the strategy works, instruct students to partner with another student and have them practice describing the steps to one another as you walk around the class and listen to their practice. Tell them to refer to their notes to help them describe each step. After the partner practice, move into a group review and ask students questions about the purpose of each step of the strategy. The goal of this activity is to make sure each student understands each step of the strategy and how to use it.


6. After the strategy has been presented, post the steps of the strategy in a place in the classroom where you and the students can refer to it when needed. Several times each week identify a critical paragraph and model how you would summarize it. As a class, work through several paragraphs of critical information and summarize each one.


7. Make reading assignments that require students to summarize paragraphs to each other or on paper. Assignments of five or six paragraphs are about the right length for this type of assignment. As students summarize paragraphs, walk around the room and see which students have difficulty with paragraph summarization.


8. Students who have difficulty with paragraph summarization may need more individualized attention than what can be provided via large group instruction. Students who are or who become fluent with paragraph summarization should either move to section summarization or be asked to summarize paragraphs in more difficult materials. Continued practice in the steps of paragraph summarization by students who comprehend the paragraph without going through the steps will result in low motivation.

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