Summarise the Main Ideas in a Text

In this activity, we’re going to become summarising superstars.

When we summarise, we pick out key points from a text.

Summarising also picks out the main idea of a text.

Think about the last book you read.

Could you summarise the main events of the book in no more than 15 words?

Here’s the main idea of the last book I read:

A boy finds out he is a wizard and goes to wizard school.

In this summary, I haven’t mentioned all the extra information like what the boy looks like and what he eats for breakfast.

Summary questions often ask us to order events in a text.

Read this recount:

Yesterday was the best day of my life. My awesome dad treated me to a trip to the largest water park in the country.

Annoyingly, dad woke me up early to beat the traffic so I was a bit grumpy on the drive there. When we arrived, I saw the giant, colourful slides and forgot about the early start. Firstly, I went on the rushing rapids. They were incredibly fun and the powerful water threw my body all over the place. I kept bashing and bouncing into other people. It was so funny. After that, I went on the dramatic drop slide. I was a little bit nervous at the top but I went for it and it was thrilling. Finally, we went in the wave pool and I loved jumping up and down with the movement of the waves. I can’t wait to visit again next year.

Here are the three main events from this recount. 

Which order do these three events go in?

Here is the correct order.

Did you get the same?

In this activity, we will use our summarising skills to summarise and order main events from texts.

Are you ready to get started?