Summarizing

5.) Good readers summarize the core elements.

Good readers can step back to a "big picture" view of a reading to discover what is at the core. A reader should find the central themes, messages, patterns, and main idea of the piece. It is important to put all the smaller parts of reading together to build the puzzle of what the author had intended to portray.

http://www.justinziegler.com/portfolio/2006/03/21/frindle/

Summarizing Frindle by Andrew Clements

To summarize a text is to take a step back and consider all the smaller components of the story that lead up to the overarching plot and storyline. My thoughts took elements of each of the previous strategies (questioning, key passages, vocabulary, and personal connections) and tried to draw lines connecting a sequence of events and central message. Basically, I asked myself, "In a nutshell, what was this story about? What were the most important events and ideas? What changed from the beginning to the end? What have a learned from this?"

Example Summary of Frindle by Andrew Clements:

Frindle by Andrew Clements is the story of a confident boy in fifth grade who takes pride in being a "class clown" and leader. When Nick begins fifth grade, his teacher, Mrs. Granger, does not tolerate his motives to distract her teaching and derail the class' work. She asks Nick to present to the class about where words come from and how they get into the dictionary. This inspires Nick to invent his own word, frindle, that quickly becomes a new word used by the whole town, state, and country! Mrs. Granger fights against this "made-up" word to defend the historical roots of words found in the dictionary. Who will win this "word war"?