Subscribe

9th grade · English Language Arts · Unit 8 of 12

Summarizing Texts

Find the main ideas and put them in your own words.

What your child practices

Practices summarizing: grouping related ideas, separating important from less important information, paraphrasing and keeping the author's message.

Maine Learning Results learning standard: Reading 5 · finding central ideas and summarizing in your own words

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Find the main ideas: topic sentences and key terms help.
  2. Leave out small details and examples. Group related ideas.
  3. Use your own words and keep the author’s message. Test it: would someone who hasn’t read it understand?

Example: Which belongs in a summary of a flood news story: what happened, where and the main effects, or every person’s quote? A summary keeps only the most important points. Every quote is too much detail. Answer: what happened, where, and the main effects

Summarizing Texts in Maine

In the Maine Learning Results, this is unit 8 of 12 in 9th grade English Language Arts, after Forms & Features and before Form & Composing.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Maine Department of Education

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    Which strategy helps find important information?

    • highlight every line
    • highlight only the title
    • highlight topic sentences and key terms

  2. Question 2

    Putting an idea in your own words while keeping its meaning is…

    • summarizing a title
    • paraphrasing
    • quoting

  3. Question 3

    A reader's summary changes the author's message. What should the reader do?

    • keep it as is
    • reread and revise the summary to match the text
    • delete the text

  4. Question 4

    Summaries can be used to…

    • avoid reading
    • replace the original text in a research essay
    • clarify meaning and support interpretation

  5. Question 5

    What is the best first step before summarizing a long article?

    • read only the last line
    • count the words
    • identify the main idea of each section

  6. Question 6

    Which pair of words signals an important idea in a text?

    • in conclusion
    • meanwhile
    • by the way

More 9th grade