Summarizing

OK-This is stumping me! I’m not sure how to teach summarizing-or actually, I think I can teach it, but I’m not sure how long a summary should or should not be! 🙂 I understand that when we read a paragraph we can summarize it in 1 sentence, but what about a complete article or story? How long should that summary be? If you know the answer to that question-PLEASE TELL ME!!!!!!!

Anyway, I am wanting to have an anchor chart to hang up in my classroom so the kids will have a visual to help them. I know that I am going to use my “Main Idea Hand” to help them, but I want to also give them some more guidelines. I am going to start compiling some information on summarizing to help me with this. Here is a good link with a simple explanation of how to help them write a summary. I’ll post more later as I find it. http://www.readingquest.org/strat/summarize.html