How do you teach a very thorough child to summarize?

[nancypants]

My 7 year old is extremely thorough and has a memory like a bank safe. He literally remembers things almost word for word. This is awesome in so many ways but when you want him to summarize something for a narration exercise... well, it comes out more like a word for word retelling!

He is reading Famous Men of the Middle Ages right now as part of his history studies. Sometimes I will just ask him what he read about. Other times I will have him draw a picture or a series of cartoons depicting the story. Other times I will have him give a narration that I type as he speaks.

Last time I had him do this we ended up with an entire typed page!! I love his ability to retain stuff and put it together so well but if I let him keep giving me the long version will he never learn to summarize? (He tells everything and explains everything in the most painfully complex way as well... he often loses me in the nitty gritty details of his stories or the recounting of his memories.)

What he is doing is getting maybe a four page reading down to a one page summary and I want more of a two paragraph summary. But how can I get him to this point without totally discouraging him and making him feel like I am "writing it for him" which is what he feels like when I suggest shortened wording?

[WTMCassandra]

My son (age 9) is like this. I tell him to back away from the details and tell me just the main idea. (I tell him he's so close to the story he can't see the forest for the trees--but I tell him nicely, not snarkily.) I make him go paragraph by paragraph and write one sentence or possibly two that tells the main idea in his OWN words. This helps prevent the the parroting. If I let the child narrate and I typed, I'd be typing out a replica of the story and be chained to the keyboard most of the day. I recommend you break down the story into smaller parts and have him narrate those. Actually, for a 7yo of that personality to condense four pages down to one--I think he's doing quite well. After he learns to summarize smaller chunks, rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Ad nauseum.

[Amy in Orlando]

What Cassandra said. Help them narrow it down. With my boys it helped if I reminded them that they only needed to write what would remind them of the whole story.

I read a post, a long time ago, about using Lego's to outline (both of your boys are a little young for that yet) but it was a great visual aid to getting the kids to be succinct.

I know I sound like a broken record tonight, but the IEW method of outlining has revolutionized my older boys' lives. If you can get your son to pick 1-4 key words out of each sentence (initially), it's a big thing.

Work with small parts of text, even if he's capable of sitting and comprehending large quantities of text, and help him condense it into manageable bites of writing. Honestly, Nancy, he's doing great!!!! My oldest was like your son and he writes wonderfully now. Around 6-7 grade is when I had him really start distilling the information and it's not been a huge terrible transition. If your son enjoys writing, I wouldn't push too hard to change his style right now. (If it helps, my just turned 8-yr-old cried for a bit today because he had to write 4 thank you notes! I'm thinking 15 sentences total. They're all so different!)

[Suzanne in ABQ]

I used to jot these words down the side of a sheet of notebook paper, then ask dc to tell me one or two word answers to each question word. Then, I'd have them use those keywords to put together a short paragraph (trying to keep it to one sentence for each.

Not all of the six word questions will have answers, especially "Why?" So, if you can't think of anything, just leave those ones blank.

[angela in ohio]

I have a dd like this. I give her a limit (three sentences, for example,) and I use longer passages to keep her from being able to memorize the whole thing.

[sweetTN]

My dd is the same way, remembering all the nitty gritty details. What has worked for us is, instead of asking dd to summarize, I ask her to tell me 3 or 4(or however many you want) things she learned from what she read. This ends up being more like a summary and less like a retelling of the story.

[frogpond1]

may take care of things on its own!