Mastering Summaries: Skills & Strategies for English Language Arts Classrooms

The summary assignment in the upper elementary and middle school classrooms often doesn’t get talked about much in professional development materials, but it is one of the MOST assigned assignments during a given school year. Teachers are focusing on skills surrounding retelling, comprehension, and checking for understanding regarding genre. Summary writing is one of the cornerstone types of assignments that need to be mastered before moving to more complex material. Often, as a new teacher, you may not know where to begin. This post is an introduction to teaching the narrative summary and the nonfiction summary in grades 4-8. You will find the difference between narrative and nonfiction summaries, strategies for tackling both assignments, and then example assignments you can use now.