Use Trail Mix to Teach Summarization

To teach summarizing, fourth grade teacher David Henry passed out a pack of Sweet 'N Salty snack mix (including nuts, sunflower seeds, raisins, and M&Ms) to each of his Sweetser Elementary students (Sweetser, IN).

He told the students to go through and pick out only what they wanted. He specifically instructed them to "pull out the best ingredients." Of course they pulled out all the M&Ms and left the healthy stuff in the pouch.

He then talked about how the M&Ms were the best part and that although the other ingredients were okay, none of us really felt they were the "most important."

Sketching a Sweet-N-Salty package on the board, he labeled it "summarizing." Then he listed the words "characters, plot, setting, and beginning, middle, and end" under the title. If these are the most important components within a story, then the students need to find the M&M details, the most important details, of each. When summarizing, the reader should review the story and pick out the most important parts.

David said that when he finished, his students had the "aha" he was hoping for.