How to Support Summarizing Skills: 4 Simple Strategies

Summarizing can be a tough skill for kids with language disorders. It requires them to understand what they’ve read or heard, pick out the most important parts, and express those ideas clearly and briefly. That’s a big task! But with the right support, kids can get better at summarizing — and feel more confident doing it.

Here are four strategies to help your child build summarizing skills at home:

1. Use the “Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then” Method

This simple framework helps kids break a story down into key parts:

• Somebody – Who is the main character?
• Wanted – What did they want?
• But – What was the problem?
• So – What did they do?
• Then – How did it end?

Write the words on a notecard and keep it nearby during reading time. It gives structure and helps your child focus on the most important details without getting overwhelmed.

2. Highlight the Big Ideas Together

When reading a short story or article, pause after each section and ask your child, “What was the most important thing that just happened?” Write down one sentence together. At the end, you’ll have a short summary that captures the key points. This step-by-step approach makes it easier for kids who struggle to process and retain a lot of information at once.

3. Practice with Visuals

Use comic strips, picture books, or even short videos. Visuals help kids better understand what’s happening, which is especially helpful for those with language delays. After watching or reading, ask them to tell you what happened in 3–5 sentences. You can even draw a quick storyboard together to map it out. This decreases the challenge of the comprehension task and allows kids to instead focus on the task of summarizing.

4. Model It Out Loud

Before asking your child to summarize, model it yourself. For example, after reading a page, say, “So far, this story is about a boy who lost his dog and is trying to find him.” Hearing how you summarize helps kids learn what to listen for and how to keep things short and focused.

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