This was a trial I had been looking forward to undertaking as Summarising seemed to have great utility in teaching Guided Reading. This trial was undertaken with my Year 6 class who have a range of reading abilities and attention spans. Retention of information from texts can be a hindrance to children, especially when trying to answer longer questions that require the synthesis of information from across the text. Summarising could be a great tool for aiding retention and understanding of the text. We undertake Guided Reading as a whole class activity, sharing a text and then answering questions together with a mix of verbal and written answers.

In this trial, children would write one or two sentences to summarise the key moments and/or themes from the page, creating a “map” of the text to aid their recall later on in the lesson. We only had one copy of the book in school so I was sharing the text via a visualiser meaning children would need summary notes for later in the lesson to answer questions. We could have answered questions as we went along but I wanted to see how useful summarising could be in aiding retention.

For this first trial (I will also undertake one with a longer prose text), I chose the beautiful The Proudest Blue, which is a tale about a girl accompanying her sister to school on the first day she is wearing an hijab. The text is age appropriate for the children’s ability with a few Tier 3 words for Islam that they may not have come across before or in a long while. The text is multi-layered, with themes of sisterhood and racism to explore and discuss. In all, it took us 40mins to read the text due to many segways and discussions around the text and the themes it contains.

A great reading and exploration of the text but one where children would ordinarily loose focus or struggle with recall.

Planning for Summarising a Picture Book

I recommend scanning or photographing the text so it can be shared via the interactive board. It allows you to control the reading speed and dismantle the book as needed. Some images may be best scene as a single page rather than the double pages. You can also zoom in on specific moments or make the text bigger as needed.

Think about the focus for summarising: do you want moments and content, or do you want themes and inference? Or maybe a mix of both? This text included a number of names I have not come across before so double-checked the pronunciation ahead of time.

Using Summarising for a Picture Book

Read the through each page or double page taking questions and sharing the text as you usually would. For a text such as The Proudest Blue, I allow lots of time for questions and exploration of the vocabulary and themes. Once we have read and discussed each page, I gave 2-mins or so for children to write one or two sentences summarising the most important details from the page. I kept reminding children that this summary was to prompt their memory.

This also creates a good ebb-and-flow in the session, with time for partner or whole class discussion alongside moments of silent writing.

Reflection

This was successful beyond my expectations. Whilst the notes created (see above) were not the neatest, the act of writing those notes added comprehension and retention. The children remarked that having to summarise the information made them engage with the material at a deeper level, improving their understanding along with their retention. Both myself and the class TA noticed a marked improvement of the text even from LPAP and SEN children who usually struggle with recalling and sequencing information from a story.

As with other Generative Learning activities we have trialed, there is a noticeable improvement in engagement and the length of time children can concentrate on the task for. Guided Reading can be tiring for some children who will go off task, yet all of the class remained engaged for at least 50% longer than we would normally expect. The children were so engaged we nearly missed Break as we had all got caught up in enjoying the text and noting ideas from it.

Children could confidently and correctly recall information we had seen at the beginning of the text some 40-mins before. When we read another text by the author a few days later, children could still recall detailed information about the picture book without their notes.

For a picture book, Summarising was an excellent approach to take. It capture the information in the text as well as the deeper themes in the pictures. This noticeably improved lesson engagement and retention of information into the longterm memory. I will be repeating this activity again.