Comprehension

in Grade 2
Main Idea, Summarizing, and Retelling

Abstract: Through observation

and assessment, Mrs. Cooper
and I noticed a decline in the
reading scores of her second
grade class. The problem was
identified as a comprehension
problem and affected the
majority of her class. Through
research and careful
consideration, we decided to
implement a new unit to focus
primarily on comprehension
strategies such as locating the
main idea, summarizing, and
retelling. The unit would cover a
span of three weeks with one
week per skill. By the end of the
unit the students should achieve

Chekira DeWitt

Introduction: Mrs. Coopers class is made up of 24 students, 12 boys and 12 girls. The students
are between the ages of 7 and 8 attend Glenwood School. There are several students in the class
with special requirements. Four students have been diagnosed with ADHD; 3 are medicated 1 is
not. One student has a high-anxiety disorder that causes him to have lash out or have crying fits
if he begins to feel rushed or overwhelmed. One student has a learning disability, and one has a
behavior disorder. There is no Title 1 program at Glenwood, therefore Mrs. Cooper must
accommodate each student on her own. She also has several students who are very advanced.

Research Problem: The students in Mrs. Coopers class struggle with reading comprehension.
Most of them are avid readers, but some are just developing the fluency skills they need. When
the students read aloud, Mrs. Cooper and I noticed that they focus really hard on the words.
When given comprehension tests or when asked about the content of the passage, only a handful
of them could explain what had happened. The students generally remembered the names of the
characters and perhaps a couple of facts from the story, but there were not comprehending the
overall idea. Mrs. Cooper and I used the students lunch and resource time to research strategies
to develop comprehension. We decided on a three-week intervention in which we would teach
the students to identify the main idea, summarize the content, and retell the content in your own
words.
Literature Review:
Locating the main is perhaps the most vital step towards good comprehension skills. The
main idea tells us what the author wanted us to know. It is usually supported by descriptive
details, but can stand alone as well. The main idea is a complete thought that basically

summarizes the entire passage. Intervention central suggests using main idea maps to implement
this strategy. Students can write or draw pictures, but are encouraged to make a mental map of
the most important parts if the passage. Dr. Daniel J. Boudah, Ph.D. from East Carolina
University found in a study of his own test group, that students using the his version of the Main
Idea Strategy Enhanced performance on all measures, even as readability of the passages
increased from about third grade level, to nearly ninth grade level. Also, 100% of his middle
school students passed the state reading test compared to 63% before his study. The purpose of
his strategy was very similar to my own. He intended to increase student performance on reading
comprehension tasks requiring understanding of inferential main ideas. He hoped to promote
student independence during homework reading, in class assignments, testing, and any other task
requiring comprehension skills. Boudah believed that basically all students could benefit from
his strategy. He suggested that students follow the following acronym:
Make the topic known
Accent at least two essential details
Ink out the clarifying details
Notice how the Essential Details are related
Infer the main idea
In survey responses, teachers and students alike were overwhelmingly positive about the main
idea strategy.
You can make the teaching of this strategy fun and highly interactive by drawing a giant
version of a Main Idea Graphic Organizer onto newsprint and laying it on the floor. Assign each
individual in the class to read through a practice passage and write out a summary main-idea
phrase and key ideas or facts for each paragraph. The teacher should review the passage with the
group. For each paragraph, invite a volunteer to stand on the space on the giant organizer that

corresponds to the paragraph and read aloud his or her summary for class feedback. Continue
through the passage until all paragraphs have been reviewed and student volunteers have
occupied each point on the graphic organizer.
Next, Reading Rockets suggests that summarizing helps students learn to determine
essential ideas and consolidate important details that support them. It enables students to focus
on key words and phrases of an assigned text that are worth noting and remembering, and
teaches students how to take a large selection of text and reduce it to the main points for more
concise understanding. To encourage and guide the summarization process, ask the students the
following questions:
1. What are the main ideas?
2. What are the crucial details necessary for supporting the ideas?
3. What information is irrelevant or unnecessary?
The students could then discuss the questions as a group or write them in a reading journal. It is
important that students learn to distinguish relevant information from irrelevant details. The
students should take mental note of the main ideas to reflect upon after reading. You could also
have them use key words or phrases to identify the main points from the text in a group
conversation.
Educational Leadership says that in a series of studies with teachers, they determined that
summarizing strategies have a substantial average effect on student understanding of academic
content. Across 17 experimental/ control studies that teachers conducted, they found that using

summarizing strategies, on average, increased students' understanding of content by 19 percentile

points. However, they continue to say that in order to be effective, a summarizing strategy should
help students discern the inherent structures in a text. For example, a story has a structure: There
are main characters; there is rising and falling action, and there are events that take place in
certain locations. If students are aware that these elements are important aspects of stories, they
are more likely to identify them and, consequently, more likely to comprehend the stories they
read. Teachers should spend a decent amount of time identifying the story elements, and the
students should strive to be able to identify the elements of the story on their own as well.
Knowing the structure of the story could serve as a guide to develop a list of important details.
To differentiate instruction, the teacher can guide students throughout the summary
writing process. You should encourage students to write successively shorter summaries,
constantly refining their written piece until only the most essential and relevant information
remains. You could also have students work together to answer summary questions and write
responses. Their responses could easily be assessed through oral discussion.
According to Facts in Action, Story retelling, the process by which a child listens to or
reads a story and then summarize, or "retells," the story in his or her own words, is a technique
that ties into learning experiences and is an effective way to improve children's reading
comprehension. For young children who are just starting to develop their reading skills, this
exercise can be extremely helpful.
Studies on story recall have found that extended use of the technique of story retelling
leads to large improvements in story comprehension, making inferences, and understanding of
story structure. Rather than having children answer specific questions about story details, story

retelling requires children to focus on the bigger picture of the story and therefore allows the
teacher to see how well a child understands the story as a whole. By having children tell the story
in their own words, educators can identify each childs strengths, and specific areas of difficulty
that arise for individual students. This allows teachers to better recognize the struggles of each
individual student and create better differentiated individualized instruction for each particular
student.
In The Power of Story Retelling, authors Akimi Gibson, Judith Gold, and Charissa
Sgouros write, Story retellings require the reader or listener to integrate and reconstruct the
parts of a story. They reveal not only what readers or listeners remember, but also what they
understand. Retellings build story comprehension. Simply recalling selected events or facts
from a story or informational text is not the same as retelling. Retellings go beyond the literal
and help children focus on a deeper understanding of the text. When children retell stories in a
comprehensive manner, they reflect on the text and make distinctions between the actual words
on the page and the meanings behind them. The article suggests that when you engage a child in
retelling, consider the following guidelines:
1. Clarify what you will be asking the child to do before reading the text to the child.
2. Invite the child to retell the text as though telling it to a friend who has never heard it
before.
3. Encourage the child by using open-ended prompts when necessary.
There are several activities to use when practicing retelling in the classroom. Students
could act using dramatizations. Young children love dramatic play, and this activity provides
them with a natural way to recreate a story. Choose read-aloud texts with simple story structure
and a limited number of characters. Do this activity with a small group of children, each of them

taking on a different character from the story. Older children, who might be reading more
complex stories, can choose a particular part of the story to act out, such as the emotions of a
particular character or what a character might have been thinking and why.
Another creative strategy is to allow the children to do Chalk Talks. Chalk Talks are
retellings in which children draw aspects of a story while telling about it. This technique is great
for older children, and works with both fiction and nonfiction texts. Chalk talks are most
effective when children have enough room to see how their retelling is evolving as they draw.
Using chalk (on a chalkboard or the sidewalk) allows children to erase and redo elements of the
retelling as needed. You can also use mural or chart paper with markers.
Since retelling does not require written work of any kind, assessments can be difficult to
perform. Gibson, Gold, and Sgouros suggest that the teacher should following guidelines. They
advise that the child start with an unprompted retelling. Teachers should always perform the
following actions to assess accurate achievement:
1. Select similar texts. When comparing a childs retellings over time, use the same type of
text each time. Compare narratives with narratives and nonfiction texts with other
nonfiction texts.
2. Prepare a guide sheet. When using narratives, identify the setting, characters, events, and
resolution. For informational texts, identify the topic, purpose, and main idea. Use this
information sheet as a guide or checklist as you listen to the childs retellings.
3. Ask the child to retell the text. After the child finishes an unprompted retelling, you may
want to prompt him with more specific questions about parts of the text he did not
include. For example, if the child did not include when the story took place, ask,You
told me where the story takes place, what can you tell me about when it takes place?

4. Summarize and evaluate the retelling. Discuss and review the retelling with the child to
help him understand what can be improved and how. This process also helps you develop
instructional goals for future sessions.
Teachers also have to recognize that there are levels to the retelling process. The students will
begin with simple descriptive retellings and gradually compress to more complex retelling
(Gibson 9).
Methodology (Research Process):
To implement our plan, Mrs. Cooper and I decided upon a three-week unit based around
these three comprehension strategies. Week one would focus on identifying the main idea, week
two would teach summarizing, and in week three, students would learn to retell he passage in
their own words. The timeline would follow this outline:

I.

Identifying the Main Idea

Day 1: introduce and define the main idea, list a couple of examples,
Day 2: Ask students if they remember what a main idea is, discuss and give examples
with the class, complete an activity with the class.
Day 3: Review story structure (characters, setting, action, and resolution) have
students write one sentence to adequately describe each story element. Demonstrate
how the elements can be a guide to look for the important ideas.
Day 4: Review day 3 and complete review activities
Day 5: Assess the students through a post-test and evaluate improvement.

II.

Summarizing a Story

Day 1: Brief review of finding the Main Idea. Discuss the meaning of summarizing
with the students, show a couple of examples.
Day 2: Demonstrate to the students how putting together the main ideas of a passage
can create a summary of the entire text that includes all relevant details.Have the
students practice.
Day 3: Students will complete and summarize a dramatization.
Day 4: Students will complete chalk talks in groups and each group will gove a
summary of their chosen story.
Day 5: Students will be evaluated for progress through a post-test.
III.

Retelling
Day 1: The students will summarize a short passage using words from the text. The
class will discuss how summaries can be retold in your own words. Students will
practice by working with a partner. Partner 1 will think of an important event they
remember and tell it to partner 2, partner 2 must then tell the class in his own words
what partner 1 said.
Day 2: students will break into groups of two. Each group will receive a different
short story. The pairs must work together to make a summary to be turned in and then
retell their passage to the class.
Day 3 Students will watch a short movie clip and resell it in their own words.
Day 4: students will review all three strategies
Day 5:The students will receive a post test on their comprehension skills.

Procedures:

Since there is a wide range of readers in the classroom, Mrs. Cooper and I decided that a
great deal of scaffolding should occur. We planned for a lot of group work to encourage the
students to problem solve on their own rather than looking to us for help. We aimed to
incorporate as many active lessons as possible and to keep the students engaged.

REFERENCES
Boudah, Daniel J., Ph.D. The Main Idea Strategy: Improving Reading
Comprehension Through Inferential Thinking. N.p.: East Carolina University, 03
July 2012. PDF.

"Comprehension Skills, Strategies & Best Practices." K-8 Comprehension Skills,

Strategies, Activities & Exercises. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Nov. 2014.
Facts In Action. Associated Early Care & Education.In the Classroom. Story
Retelling Boosts Children's Reading Comprehension." Facts In Action. Associated
Early Care & Education.In the Classroom. Story Retelling Boosts Children's
Reading Comprehension. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Nov. 2014

Gibsom, Akimi, Judith Gold, and Charissa Sgouros. The Power of Story Retelling.
N.p.: The Tutor, 17 Apr. 2003. PDF.

Marzano, Robert J. "The Art and Science of Teaching." Educational

Leadership:Reading to Learn:Summarizing to Comprehend. Educational
Leadership, Mar. 2017. Web. 21 Nov. 2014.

Texas Education Agency. "Key Comprehension Strategies to Teach." Reading

Rockets. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Oct. 2014.: