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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.

Minnesota K-12 Academic Standards benchmark: 9.1.4.2 · central ideas and how they develop

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 Minnesota

In the Minnesota K-12 Academic Standards, 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: Minnesota Department of Education (MDE)

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

    Summaries can be used to…

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

  2. Question 2

    Which belongs in a summary of a news story about a flood?

    • every quote word for word
    • the reporter's lunch
    • what happened, where, and the main effects

  3. Question 3

    When you summarize, you should keep the author's…

    • font
    • message
    • spelling mistakes

  4. Question 4

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

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

  5. Question 5

    A summary of a science article should keep which kind of information?

    • the title font
    • the key findings and why they matter
    • all the numbers in the tables

  6. Question 6

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

    • meanwhile
    • by the way
    • in conclusion

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