Summarising is an important skill to practise regularly with students. It also teaches students to take notes and identify key points. 

The question words are a good starting point to identify the main ideas in a text. Not all question words are relevant, and we need to support students to be selective when working on summarising.  

 

This template can be used to summarise a paragraph, short text or longer text. 

It can be introduced during whole-class reading instruction (shared reading) so that you can explicitly model summarising and guide students to complete the template.

 

Check out our other retelling and summarising resources.

Please login to download for free

Related resources

S & L Publishing Ltd. ©2025 The Literacy Place. All rights reserved.

Website crafted by bocapa