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Intermediate School District 917

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4-2-1 Summarize!

4-2-1 Summarize!

What is it?

A guided approach to helping students identify main ideas and summarize texts. The graphic organizer itself is only a piece of this tool. For success, model the process in detail, and follow up with ongoing instruction and practice using increasingly challenging examples.

What should I use it for?

  • Identifying main ideas and supporting details

  • Writing summaries

What does it look like?

How do I use it?

Don’t assume these steps are self-explanatory. Explain and model each one thoroughly, making sure to think aloud as you work your way through sample texts. Continue modeling the process until students are clear about how to identify main ideas and complete their organizers on their own.

  1. Discuss and model strategies that students can use to identify important information within a text or presentation. (“When looking for important information, remember to check out section headings, topic sentences, and summary paragraphs.”)

  2. Teach students that the 4-2-1 organizer is a tool for identifying the most important idea in a text.

  3. Model using the 4-2-1 organizer with a sample text. Talk through your thought process and encourage students to chime in and help you:

    • Identify 4 key ideas and write them in the top boxes.

    • Select the 2 most important of those ideas (with more advanced students, show them how you can synthesize the 4 ideas into two). Write these in the middle boxes.

    • Identify the most important idea and write it in the last box.

  4. (Optional) If you are using this as a summarizing strategy, model using the information you wrote in the organizer to write a summary paragraph.

After the first time

  1. Instead of modeling (step 3), Give students opportunities to practice and get feedback with similarly complex passages—as a class, in groups, and then on their own.

  1. Use this as a collaborative strategy.

  1. Teach students to look for clues in introductory sentences and paragraphs, summary sentences and paragraphs, section headings, and specially formatted bits of text (e.g., italicized, bold, large font). Explain that the structure of a text (e.g., comparison, cause/effect, argument) can sometimes offer clues to the main idea as well. With a cause/effect paragraph, for example, the main idea will likely be about the causes and/or effects of the general topic. ( "The Civil War had many causes.")

  1. Move beyond basic printed texts. Practice identifying important information in different types of sources (e.g., video clips, data tables, slide shows, texts that have been read aloud).

  2. Use students’ paragraphs to assess their content knowledge (did they get the key points?) and/or summarizing skills. Address any deficiencies in content knowledge and/or summarizing skills.

4-2-1 Summarize For Teachers!