If a child begins to learn and practice the skill of summarising at a young age, it will help him immensely later on in his schooling career, when the workload increases significantly.
If a child can DELAY GRATIFICATION and get into the habit of summarising his work on a WEEKLY BASIS, exams and tests will be stress free.
Summarising is Like Building a House
It is essential to use a STOPWATCH when summarising. This will teach a child to work QUICKLY. His brain will also love the challenge of working to a time! The quicker he completes his work, the quicker he can go and play and have fun.
When summarising a text, a young child could tackle it in the following way:
Power Scan (building the foundation)
1. Set stopwatch for one minute.
2. Scan the page or chapter for the following: title/subtitles, pictures, paragraphs, sections.
3. Jot this information down after 1 minute is up.
4. Revise the above identified information
Scan #2 (first layer of bricks)
1. Set stopwatch for 10 seconds per paragraph.
2. Identify two or three KEYWORDS that provide the MAIN IDEA of that paragraph. These words are usually found in the first few sentences. The following question words will help a child figure out this information: what, who, how, where, when, which and why.
3. Jot these words down.
4. Revise these words.
Scan #3 (adding the next few layers of bricks)
1. One needs to decide on a format on which to place the information that is being extracted.
2. Set stopwatch for 10 seconds.
3. Find two or three KEYWORDS that can add to the information he has already extracted.
4. Place the words onto a format.
5. Add a bit of colour and illustration.
6. Revise the format.
The Big Picture
Using our ‘house analogy’ in just one minute, 20 seconds (plus a few more minutes for writing and revising), a child has a ‘BIG PICTURE’ of what his brain needs to summarise. He has also laid the first few layers of the foundation. A more in-depth explanation on how to summarise a text in English can be viewed on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2OGUQ5A44Q
Kath Denholm is a speech therapist who has worked in London, private practices in Cape Town and KZN and taught at Livingstone Remedial School for three years. She is the owner and founder of Little Genius Puppets, an online educational programme teaching young children to identify key information and take it to long-term memory.
Visit www.geniusseries.com/memory-training-3 for more information.