My kid can't summarize

[silver]

We've done all of WWE 1-2, CAP W&R books 1-3, and about half of WWE 3. She still can't give a good summary. She includes unnecessary detail or leaves out big important parts of the passage. When asking the questions about the passage in WWE, she never gets all the questions right. 

Is this a reading/listening comprehension thing? It seems that it's not from lack of practice, given the nearly four years we've spent on this with various curricula. We were both in tears today after WWE because she couldn't answer a single question about the passage correctly.

Any suggestions or what I can do to help her? 

[freesia]

To me, those are separate, but related. Is she reading the passage or are you? My first guess would be that the passage is too difficult for her. She is reading and only decoding and doesn’t have fluency at the passage level yet. If you are reading to her, the vocabulary or wording may be too mature. You didn’t say how old she is. I’m guessing 8 or 9? Try having her read and answer questions from something simpler or a read aloud you are doing. Ask her some questions from whatever book she is reading. If she really doesn’t understand anything she is reading and has been reading for more than a year, I’d be concerned.  If she doesn’t ever understand what you read to her (and it’s age appropriate and she isn’t day dreaming), I’d also be concerned. 
 

For summarizing—once you know she understands, have her tell you 10 things that happened ( you may want to stop half way.). Then have her combine those into five sentence. If you want an oral summary/narration, discuss the passage. Write down words that cover the main events and then have her narrate. Over time, work with her to refine which events are truly important. Look for progress. It’s ok if she isn’t great at summarizing right now. 

[silver]

She's 9, and has been reading for a while; I'd say three years of reading fluently enough that she will read to herself for fun. She doesn't choose to read during her free time everyday, but she does read everyday (she's given time during school and at bedtime). She's done well on her standardized testing, which tested reading words out of context (just lists), phonics skills, listening and reading vocabulary, and passage comprehension. Well, she was 50th percentile in passage comprehension at the end of 3rd grade, but I took that as a fluke because at the end of 2nd grade she was 97th percentile. 

It could be that the passages WWE 3 uses are too hard for her (or not on topics that keep her focused while reading). But we also had this problem when using WWE 1 in first grade and WWE 2 in second grade (when I would read the passage to her, and they were easier passages). The dictation in WWE 2 was way to hard for her in terms of spelling and such. That's part of why we put off WWE 3 until partway through 4th grade. 

She does okay with orally retelling a fable, which are so short they're practically summaries already. But when she has to start leaving details out and only choose important points, that's where she struggles. 

[freesia]

5 minutes ago, silver said:

She's 9, and has been reading for a while; I'd say three years of reading fluently enough that she will read to herself for fun. She doesn't choose to read during her free time everyday, but she does read everyday (she's given time during school and at bedtime). She's done well on her standardized testing, which tested reading words out of context (just lists), phonics skills, listening and reading vocabulary, and passage comprehension. Well, she was 50th percentile in passage comprehension at the end of 3rd grade, but I took that as a fluke because at the end of 2nd grade she was 97th percentile. 

It could be that the passages WWE 3 uses are too hard for her (or not on topics that keep her focused while reading). But we also had this problem when using WWE 1 in first grade and WWE 2 in second grade (when I would read the passage to her, and they were easier passages). The dictation in WWE 2 was way to hard for her in terms of spelling and such. That's part of why we put off WWE 3 until partway through 4th grade. 

She does okay with orally retelling a fable, which are so short they're practically summaries already. But when she has to start leaving details out and only choose important points, that's where she struggles. 

My guess is that the passages are too hard. I used some WWE with my youngest and the passages we complicated. I also didn’t use them at the target age, but I can’t remember when or if she did 3. At some point we switched to using the hardback book and our own passages. Then I would definitely use easier passages for her. Summarizing isn’t easy for elementary students or even some adults. Take notes for her and start by having her summarize using a key word list. Once she has the idea it will get easier. 

[Clemsondana]

I had a kid who struggled with this.  Kid had a speech issue and one of the odd things that often went with it was difficulty in sequencing, which I think influenced kid's summarizing of stories.  They didn't have issues with recalling details of the sort asked about in standard reading comprehension exercises.  I used the Inference Jones workbook to target some of the issues.  When writing reports, I found that kid would get bogged down in whatever they thought was interesting.  So, I encouraged them to try to write a report or summary that focused on main ideas and then label a paragraph  with 'other things that I found interesting'.  Knowing that they could share their interesting tidbits somewhere seemed to free up their brain to focus on main ideas.  It still took some work, but it helped.  I would say that kid was around 10-11 when they finally were able to do this reasonably well, despite being highly academic and accellerated in pretty much everything related to school.  

[Ellie]

2 hours ago, silver said:

We've done all of WWE 1-2, CAP W&R books 1-3, and about half of WWE 3. She still can't give a good summary. She includes unnecessary detail or leaves out big important parts of the passage. When asking the questions about the passage in WWE, she never gets all the questions right. 

Is this a reading/listening comprehension thing? It seems that it's not from lack of practice, given the nearly four years we've spent on this with various curricula. We were both in tears today after WWE because she couldn't answer a single question about the passage correctly.

Any suggestions or what I can do to help her? 

I know adults who cannot give a good summary, so there's that. I think learning to write/communicate succinctly takes much longer for some people than it does for others.

Does she do her summaries orally? (I have only barely skimmed the materials you mentioned, so I'm not terribly familiar with them.) If so, what if she wrote them out, and then you and she go back over them and physically cross out things that are unnecessary and talk about why it is so.

Also, I have to say that if I were using a specific method or text or whatnot to teach my dc, and they were brought to tears, I would spend a good long time reevaluating what I was doing.

[LMD]

1. I find some of the questions in wwe confusing, lots and lots of questions about details (how many x, what colour was y etc) it's not surprising that they then put too many details in their summaries.

2. Have you listened to SWB'S talks on writing in the elementary grades? Very very helpful and reassuring.

3. At 8 or 9, they're still just picking out the things that stood out to them. Not necessarily the most important parts.

4. I'd definitely go with shorter/simpler passages and try to lead her to the idea that there is one important idea that, if it were missing, the rest wouldn't make sense. I would to it yourself and model out loud the thought process: "well, this whole paragraph was about a girl named x. Hmm, what is she doing in this passage? Well, she talked to y and picked a flower and crossed the bridge... oh, she did all of those things while on her journey to A! Those things wouldn't have happened if she didn't go on this journey! So the main idea is a girl named x left on her journey to A."

Then, you help her through this thought process until she can do it without prompting. That's what wwe is trying to do but it's hard to script for every family!

[silver]

3 hours ago, LMD said:

1. I find some of the questions in wwe confusing, lots and lots of questions about details (how many x, what colour was y etc) it's not surprising that they then put too many details in their summaries.

2. Have you listened to SWB'S talks on writing in the elementary grades? Very very helpful and reassuring.

3. At 8 or 9, they're still just picking out the things that stood out to them. Not necessarily the most important parts.

4. I'd definitely go with shorter/simpler passages and try to lead her to the idea that there is one important idea that, if it were missing, the rest wouldn't make sense. I would to it yourself and model out loud the thought process: "well, this whole paragraph was about a girl named x. Hmm, what is she doing in this passage? Well, she talked to y and picked a flower and crossed the bridge... oh, she did all of those things while on her journey to A! Those things wouldn't have happened if she didn't go on this journey! So the main idea is a girl named x left on her journey to A."

Then, you help her through this thought process until she can do it without prompting. That's what wwe is trying to do but it's hard to script for every family!

I have her talk on writing for elementary grades, but I haven't listened to it for years, I should do that!

Thanks for the rest, it's reassuring that my kid isn't way off here.

[LMD]

Definitely not way off, I have an 8 year old in wwe2 right now (I use it a grade behind, he's my 4th kid) who will fill his summaries with all the little details that he personally liked best 😄

As long as I steer him to also include most of the main points, I call it good!

[*****]

I haven't read through this whole thread, but have you tried IEW, Structure and Style? I feel this does a good job. You can  start with oral outlines where the child dictates to you. You write and child can read the 'summary' at the end. Eventually, the child can write the summaries, but you can work at your own pace while helping the child build summarizing these skills.