How to teach children to make a summary

We have made it clear that instilling children with the habit of reading has many benefits. Knowing new words will increase their vocabulary, they will learn spelling, they will awaken their curiosity and imagination and all together they will have a greater reading comprehension, so important when

We have made it clear that instilling children with the habit of reading has many benefits. Knowing new words will increase their vocabulary, they will learn spelling, they will awaken their curiosity and imagination and all together they will have a greater reading comprehension, so important when it comes to understanding a text.

Tips for children to learn to read and understand a text

There are children who despite studying many hours have a very low school performance, however much they read if they do not understand the message, it will not help and the time spent will always be insufficient, that is why it is so important that since they are small we do reading comprehension exercises and teach them to decipher the fundamental content of the text, or what is the same, to summarize what they have read.

To start with the youngest children we can resort to children's stories and poems, and always according to their age. I leave an example with one of my poems. We will read the story with them, slowly, if necessary several times.

THE WHALE

A whale has escaped

to go to the river to swim,

because he thinks that from memory

he knows the bottom of the sea.

The whale by the river,

goes looking at the shores,

enjoying the landscape

has a great time.

He does not know at what time

he begins to have problems,

but because his body is large

his belly crawls in the sand.

She is trapped in the river,

very scared and with pity,

how much more her body moves,

more buried she stays.

It moves from one side to another

moves its heavy tail,

the waters rise and fall

forming a huge wave.

At last swimming slowly

from there you can get away,

and down the river

go back to the sea content.

There swimming at ease

has begun to think,

there is nothing better in the world

than to return home.

Is there a word that you do not understand? The first will be to clarify its meaning, since it is fundamental when understanding the message of our text. At this point we will ask ourselves, who or who are the protagonists of our history? We will invite you to tell us clearly. We will follow the order of the poem and teach them to relate the main ideas to each other.

The main message will be:The whale is going to swim in the river and has problems.

The second part following our exhibition will be: It gets trapped in the sand.

The last part of the exhibition will be: But it escapes and returns to the sea happy.

In these three sentences is the key to understanding our history: The whale is going to swim in the river, it stays trapped in the sand, but it escapes and returns to the sea happy.

When the children are older we can teach them to underline the main ideas and to write them down in a notebook to make a small outline, and thus be able to summarize the story. We will use dictionaries and encyclopedias if necessary and we will encourage you to do the summary with your words because we will make sure that you have understood the message well.

If we are accustomed to the children to know how to summarize the texts since they were little, when they are older they will need less hours of study, and they will have a better school performance.