Summarising a text: try the 'Say a Summary' challenge

If you’re looking for a quick but high-impact activity to strengthen your child’s reading comprehension skills, please read on!

Summarising is a critical skill in reading comprehension. If a child can summarise what they have read, you can be confident that they have absorbed and understood what they have read. In 11 Plus exams, children need to quickly identify essential information in each paragraph. Therefore, they need to be able to find the ‘theme’ for a paragraph. Step forward ‘summarising’!

Try this ‘Say A Summary’ challenge. The good news is, there is NO writing required for this one!

What you will need:
• Your child’s reading book.
• 10 minutes.
• A quiet place to have a chat with your child.
Note: A paragraph is provided at the end of this post as an example

How to do the summarising challenge:
1. Your child reads a new paragraph of their book (either aloud to you or in their head).
2. Without referring back to the text, ask them to describe the content of the paragraph.

Sometimes children fall into the trap of recounting everything they have read rather than identifying the general ‘theme’ of the paragraph.


3. Now, ask them to reread the paragraph.
4. Next, can they summarise what they have read in a few sentences?

Note: Your child may need to reread the paragraph. It is common for children to need to read a text about four times to detect all details and gain a deeper understanding.

5. After that, can they summarise what they have just read in one sentence?

6. Finally, can they think of a suitable sub-title for this paragraph?

Done!

If you would like to extend learning, you can discuss language features. Example: What images did you like best in this paragraph? Which words help to build this image?

Paragraph example:
The whole chrysalis cracks open, hinged near the top like a pistachio, and the orange and black of the butterfly’s wings are deeper and richer than any colours I have ever seen. Even the older boys gasp, and they don’t let anyone see they are interested in anything normally.
The black fronds wave and scrabble, and I realise they are its feet. The butterfly is pulling itself out, flexing its wings to loosen the case and its feet to drag itself out of the crack. Suddenly it slides free, its feet gripping the chrysalis, which does not look brown or any colour anymore – just an empty papery shell, like the dried skin you pull off a scar after burning your hand.
-ends-

Response example:
1. A two-sentence summary: Some boys are watching in awe as a butterfly comes out of its chrysalis, which looks like a hinged pistachio. Then it emerges, leaving behind its papery shell.

2. A one-sentence summary: A butterfly emerges from its chrysalis while boys look on in awe.

3. Sub-title suggestion: A butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.