Summarizing Made Easy For Older Speech Students

Are your students struggling to stay on topic or understand important details while summarizing?

Summarizing is tricky skill for kids of all ages, but I'm sharing a tip to make summarizing easy for older students. Read this post to get the full scoop!

Are you sick and tired of saying, “is that detail important?” or “Is that the correct sequence?” or “Tell me more!” when you ask your students to summarize or even tell a personal narrative about their weekends or past events? I am here to help provide you with a strategy that has been working with my students.

Somebody-Wanted-But-So-Then

By utilizing this scaffolding technique, your students will have the framework of what to say when summarizing stories (with problems/solutions, which most fiction stories have). I provide my students with the graphic organizer (free in my TpT store which you can grab HERE). I use this graphic organizer with personal narratives, story recall, and storytelling games, like Rory's Story Cubes. See my full post on how I use this game by clicking HERE!

Want an example? If summarizing the movie Shrek, I would say “Shrek, wanted a peaceful swamp, but fairy tale creatures took over due to Lord Farquad, so he went to save the princess, and then got his swamp back.” I just love using popular movies to teach new concepts in a fun and motivating way!

You can also use fun Post It notes like this one below! You can assign each finger to “somebody-wanted-but-so-then.” Students can have fun “knocking down” the fingers as they retell stories. Don't have these Post Its? You can use your hands or students' hands! Have them knock down fingers!

Summarizing is tricky skill for kids of all ages, but I'm sharing a tip to make summarizing easy for older students. Read this post to get the full scoop!