Tips for Teaching Summarizing and Finding Themes

The second reading literature standard includes two of the most challenging skills for students – summarizing and finding themes. I skip this standard early in the year and make sure I cover RL3 first, since it builds background knowledge about characters and other story elements. Then, we’re ready to dig in deeper and tackle RL2. Let’s look at some tips for teaching summarizing and finding themes.

Breaking Down the Standard

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The first thing we need to do is to break down the standard at the different grade levels. It is really helpful to know what your students are expected to do in the grade level before yours and the grade level after yours. This allows you to differentiate your lessons and meet the needs of all your students.

First Grade

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.2 – Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson.

Important Skills to Teach:

What it means to retell a story
How to identify the most important key details to include in a retelling
What a central message or lesson is
How to find the central message or lesson of a story

I Can Statements:

I can retell a story using the most important key details from the story.
I can identify the central message or lesson of a story.

Download a week of 1st grade lesson plans to teach this standard.

Download a digital slideshow to assign for distance learning or as a center activity.

Second Grade

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.2 – Recount stories, including fables and folktales from diverse cultures, and determine their central message, lesson, or moral.

Important Skills to Teach:

How to retell a story and include only the most important information
How to find the central message, lesson, or moral of a story
What fables and folktales are and how to retell the stories and find the lessons in them

I Can Statements:

I can retell a story by telling the most important information.
I can identify the central message, lesson, or moral of a story.

Download a week of 2nd grade lesson plans to teach this standard.

Download a digital slideshow to assign for distance learning or as a center activity.

Third Grade

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.2 – Recount stories, including fables, folktales, and myths from diverse cultures; determine the central message, lesson, or moral and explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text.

Important Skills to Teach:

What fables, folktales, and myths are
How to retell a story by including the most important parts
What a central message, lesson, and moral are
How to identify the central message, lesson, or moral of a story
How to use details from the story to explain the central message, lesson, or moral

I Can Statements:

I can retell stories by using the most important details from a story.
I can read fables, folktales, and myths from different cultures.
I can identify the central message, lesson, or moral of a story.
I can explain how the key details of a story show the central message, lesson, or moral.

Download a week of 3rd grade lesson plans to teach this standard.

Download a digital slideshow to assign for distance learning or as a center activity.

Fourth Grade

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.2 – Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.

Important Skills to Teach:

What a theme is
How to use details from the text to find the theme in a story, drama, or poem
What a summary is
How to identify the most important information to include in a summary

I Can Statements:

I can use details from the text to identify the theme of a story, drama, or poem.
I can write a summary of a story, poem, or drama by including the most important information.

Download a week of 4th grade lesson plans to teach this standard.

Download a digital slideshow to assign for distance learning or as a center activity.

Fifth Grade

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.2 – Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.

Important Skills to Teach

How to identify ways characters respond to challenges in stories and dramas
How to identify ways the speaker in a poem reflects on a topic
How to use details from a story, drama, or poem to find the theme
How to summarize a text by including the most important information

I Can Statements:

I can find the theme of a story, drama, or poem.
I can explain how the characters in a story or drama respond to challenges.
I can explain how the speaker of a poem reflects on a topic.
I can summarize a text by including the most important information.

Download a week of lesson plans to teach this standard.

Download a digital slideshow to assign for distance learning or as a center activity.

Suggested Books

For this standard, you need a lot of different types of texts. In the lower grades, the students are expected to read fables, folktales, and myths from different cultures. In the upper grades, they need to practice summarizing and finding themes in stories, dramas, and poems. As you’re selecting texts to use, it’s important to make sure they have a strong theme that the students will be able to identify. These are some of my favorite books to use to teach this standard.

Last Stop on Market Street

Each Kindness

Gaston

Peter’s Chair

Tips for Teaching Summarizing and Finding Themes in Literature

Use story maps to help with summarizing. I’ve found that the biggest challenge with summarizing is that students either want to only write one sentence or they want to include every little detail that happened in the story. A story map is a great way to help them identify the important story elements. Once they know the characters, setting, problem, important events, and solution, they can put them together to write a summary.
Start with stories your students know when teaching theme. When I teach theme, I like to start with stories my students already know, like fairy tales. We start by identifying the theme of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. My students often start out by saying things like “Don’t eat other people’s food.” or “Don’t break another person’s chair.” We talk about how these are definitely things you shouldn’t do, but they are specific to the story. I ask them to think about what lesson everyone can learn from reading about Goldilocks. This helps them look at the bigger picture of what they could take away from the story. This leads them to write themes like “Respect other people’s property.” or “Be aware of how your actions might hurt others.”
Practice these skills in fiction stories first. I know the fourth and fifth grade standards require the students to write summaries and find themes for dramas and poems. However, it’s important to introduce them to these skills in fiction stories they are used to reading. Then, after you’ve taught the characteristics of poems and dramas, you can practice these skills in those other types of texts.
Practice during read aloud time. Just like with most other standards, read aloud time is the perfect time to practice summarizing and finding theme. When you reach the end of your book, take the time to identify the most important information from the book that should be added to a summary. Think about what lessons you can learn from the characters in the book.

Other Helpful Resources

If you have students who are struggling with this standard, strategy groups and one-on-one conferences are a great way to differentiate and help all your students master it. These assessments will show you which students have mastered the standards and which students need extra practice.

1st Grade Common Core Literature Standard Assessments

1st Grade Common Core Informational Texts Standard Assessments

2nd Grade Common Core Literature Standard Assessments

2nd Grade Common Core Informational Texts Standard Assessments

3rd Grade Common Core Literature Standard Assessments

3rd Grade Common Core Informational Texts Standard Assessments

4th Grade Common Core Literature Standard Assessments

4th Grade Common Core Informational Texts Standard Assessments

5th Grade Common Core Literature Standard Assessments

5th Grade Common Core Informational Texts Standard Assessments

Get all the lesson plans you need to teach every Common Core Reading Standard for your grade level.

1st Grade Common Core Standards Bundle