Nonfiction Reading Craftivity: Summarizing activities for Informational Texts

Teaching students how to summarize and paraphrase what they have read is crucial to internalizing and expressing their reading comprehension of nonfiction texts. These nonfiction summarizing activities are a fresh, hands on and unique way students can practice this important skill. They are an alternative to nonfiction reading response that will help you to reach all learners in your classroom.

These nonfiction crafts allow students to practice…

• identifying main idea and supporting details
• writing a nonfiction summary (introduction, body, closing)
• writing a nonfiction paragraph using the hamburger writing model
• paraphrasing information

These informational reading activities require little to no prep, and the only materials needed are scissors and glue.

WHAT’S INCLUDED:

8 Summarizing Crafts:

• Nonfiction Summary Pillars: Students record the main idea and 3 supporting details. The pillars visually shows how the key details need to “support” the main idea of the text.
• Summary Lift the Flap Puzzle: On the front puzzle pieces, students record the main idea and each supporting detail on puzzle pieces. Underneath, students have space to put this information into a more detailed and complete summary.
• Main Idea Tree: Students fill in the three tree flaps, which include the Introduction (Main Idea), Body (3 Supporting Details) and Closing (Restate the Main Idea).
• My Paraphrasing Pal: Students record the main idea and author’s purpose. Then, they copy notes from the text on each of the supporting details light bulb flaps and put these notes into their own words. Options for a small (2 pages) or large (5 pages each) paraphrasing pal are included.
• Hamburger Paragraph Book: Students use this hamburger model “book” to fill in the 5 parts of a paragraph (top bun=topic sentence, lettuce/tomato/meat=3 supporting details, bottom bun=closing sentence).
• Hamburger Paragraph Lift the Flap Organizer: Students lift the flap of each of the 5 parts of their hamburger to fill in the topic sentence, 3 supporting details and closing sentence.
• News Reporter’s Notes Microphone: Students fill in the 5 W’s (Who? What? Where? When? Why?) in this microphone craft. A blank option is also included for flexibility if you prefer to have students to fill in a summary or notes underneath the microphone image.
• TV News Report: Students create a news report (summary) of the text in this lift the flap TV screen craft. Options are included for a male or female reporter, as well as without the reporter clipart.