Over the years, I have tried a variety of techniques to help my students learn the difference between summarizing and retelling. We worked hard to determine what was the main idea and what was simply a detail. We have sorted, discussed, cut things apart, made charts, completed graphic organizers, etc. First, next, then, finally. Two sentence summaries. For some kids, these techniques were very successful--but I still had many who had two sentence summaries that were at least 8 solid sentences long (which led to another lesson on the run-on sentence) or who included details that were important to them, but not to the story.
And then, I discovered the "12 word summary." I can't recall where I learned about this technique--so I am unable to give credit where credit is due--but it has been quite a game changer in my classroom. First of all, I don't use it all the time, because it is challenging. But when I do break it out, the kids get excited--they view it as fun and "easy" because it is only 12 words. Little do they know, they are working hard to get the chapter down to just 12 words--exactly 12 words (or 10 or 13--12 is not a magic number--it is just reasonable.) They have to grapple with the most important ideas and work with their writing skills to be able to communicate in a complete sentence, or two.
Here are two recent examples from a novel we are reading:
Give it a try--you might be pleasantly surprised. :)
