The objective of this unit is to provide students with exercises in order to develop their capacity to be able to pull out the key salient information from texts.

The unit provides guidance on what to include and what to leave out of a summary, and emphasises to students the importance of writing in their own words.

The student is guided through a series of exercises that begin by asking the student to identify what makes a good summary. Multiple choice questions and focused feedback draw on the student's own knowledge to come to a definition of a summary.

Next, the student is shown the three stages of writing a summary: read, note, write in your own words. Each stage has a helpful description and suggestions; for example, notes can be supported by diagrams and mind maps to capture the salient information.

There is an opportunity for students to practise making a summary inside a writing frame which can be printed and compared with three other models of summaries on the same topic.

The unit is probably best used with students working on their own, although key screens could be used for whole-class discussion.

Extension

• Explore the different ways in which summaries could be useful. Do a brainstorm of when students might choose to use them.
• When introducing a new topic, ask students to explore key aspects and bring together the main points for a presentation to the rest of the class.
• Bring in articles from different types of newspaper. Select articles that refer to the same events that took place on a particular day. Get students in pairs to make a summary of each of the articles. Although they cover the same events, are the summaries the same?
• When reading a class text, suggest that all students write a summary paragraph of the chapter as notes for revision at the end of the lesson. Model some good summaries on the board and discuss them.
• Get students to swap notes and compare their notes with each other.