![]() I know it may look tedious at first glance, but my students consistently generate stellar summaries thanks to this method. We use the verbs tells, explains, and describes most of the time.įinally, they complete the SAAC statement with their topic (T) from their Summary Plan (see above). This is an action to describe what the author is doing in their writing. Normally, it would say “the author, Lindsey Peak” or whatever the author's name is.Īction is easy because you teach them a few verbs and they stick with them. Unfortunately, the author was not given for this particular article, so we used the name of the publication (Colorado Reader) instead. For the Assign portion of the SAAC statement, you state the author's name. For the State It portion, we named the type of writing (an article) and the name of the article (The Story Behind the Switch). In the example we were using for this anchor chart, we were reading a short article out of a kid's science newspaper. First, they state the type of writing (article, book, web page, etc.) and the title of the piece of writing they are summarizing. There are four parts to the summary topic sentence. I have seen different variations of this, but this is the one I teach and love. After they have made their summary plan comes my very favorite part! For the topic sentence of our summary, we write a SAAC statement. Avoiding opinions seems to be one of the harder parts for my students. No opinions, no little tiny irrelevant details– just the facts. While they are making their plan, we emphasize the importance of including only the most important details. ![]() We color code it all at the beginning of the year and it makes it so clear for the kids. I love, love, love this method for planning writing. The dashes on the right hand side are details that support each star idea (main idea). Even if it is a long article with multiple paragraphs, we try to keep it to two or three star ideas. Each star you see shows one of the main ideas. The main topic (usually found in the first paragraph or sentence of the text) is on the top. The plan you see on the anchor chart here is the same plan we use to do all of our writing, so they are pros at it by now. Then, we write a VERY BRIEF summary plan. After they have read the text, they go through and pick out the main idea of each paragraph or group of paragraphs. We also eliminate the “include” so that it jives a little bit better with a rhythm!įirst, we teach the students to read the text through once before doing anything else. When we say “make it shorter” we bend our knees to make ourselves shorter, and when we get to “like a reporter,” we pretend we are reporters jotting notes on an invisible notepad. “Summarize means make it shorter, just the facts like a reporter!”We always stand up and read it together. Here is the anchor chart we made together. It is such a simple method once students grasp it, and they write beautiful summaries each and every time! ![]() Now I'm sharing our anchor charts for writing basic nonfiction summaries. I have blogged about it several times before, with ideas for introducing the purpose of summarizing and ideas for teaching students the difference between paraphrasing, quoting, and summarizing. Writing summaries is notoriously difficult for younger students. It is the easiest writing curriculum to follow and so effective! One of my colleagues (and former colleagues) wrote the curriculum, and I have so enjoyed using it this year. Just like our topic sentence formats, these ideas came from the fabulous writing curriculum we use called Write Now Right Now. ![]() ![]() Hi there! I'm popping in today to share with you our method for writing summaries. ![]()
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