How to Teach Objective Summary

Have you ever read a student’s “summary” that’s really just every single detail of the story crammed into one never-ending run-on sentence?

Or, on the flip side, the student who fully embraces minimalism—“The article was about whale sharks.” The end.

Makes you want to lay your head down on your desk and ‘accidentally’ let their papers fall into the trash can, doesn’t it?

Well…head up, buttercup! ☕ There’s an easy way to teach objective summaries, and I promise—it actually clicks.

Here’s how you can easily get your students writing solid, structured, and actually objective summaries:

Step 1: Start with the Foundation—The Central Idea

Before students can summarize, they need to identify the central idea.

This is the backbone of any good summary.

I wrote a post with a quick and easy way to teach it—check it out here!

Step 2: Teach an Objective Summary Mini Lesson

Introduce what makes a summary objective by setting clear rules. Summaries should:

✅ Include the central idea + supporting ideas

🚫 Not include opinions, personal reactions, interesting (but irrelevant) facts, or direct quotes

I go over all of this in my mini lesson (which you can check out on YouTube here!).

Step 3: Write the Worst Summary…On Purpose

This might sound wrong, but trust me, it works!

✔️ Have students work in groups to write the worst possible summary of a short article—one full of mistakes like unnecessary details, opinions, or direct quotes. I used the Frozen article from the central idea mini lesson. It was something they were familiar with, and eliminated the need to dedicate time to reading.

✔️ Groups read their “bad” summaries out loud, and you dramatically critique them—lean into it, be over the top! (“Did anyone listen to my lesson?! This is tragic!”)

✔️ Then, they get to crumble up their paper and literally toss the bad summary in the trash. I don’t know why, but middle schoolers LOVE this part.

Step 4: Rewrite the Summary—The Right Way

Now, with a clear idea of what not to do, students rewrite their summaries correctly.

For kids who struggle with paraphrasing, show them how to restate information without copying word-for-word. For example:

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📌 Instead of "During its theatrical run, the film was a significant commercial success, earning $1.280 billion in worldwide box office revenue,"

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✔️ They could write: "Frozen was a major box office hit, earning billions for Disney."

Step 5: Independent Practice (With a Hilariously Gross Article)

Now, have students summarize an article on their own. I use one about why we can see corn kernels in our poop. (Yes, really. And yes, they love it.) It’s high-interest, but forces them to practice keeping personal reactions out of their summaries.

Step 6: Level Up with Small Group Summaries

For a final challenge, I group students based on how they did with the corn article. Each group works together to read Is Scrolling Making You Miserable?, determine the big ideas, and write a summary on a jumbo graphic organizer. Here’s what it looks like!

I make sure to check in and work closely with groups that need extra support.

And just like that, you’ve got a class full of students who actually know how to write objective summaries! 🎉

Resources to Help You Get Started!

To help you get started…

I’m giving you a slide with the steps for writing an objective summary and a list of what not to include!

Just fill out the form for access to the Google Slide!

ELA Unlimited

If you want to skip the prep work and have everything ready to go—

Articles, the full mini lesson with fill-in-the-blank notes, and that jumbo graphic organizer—

You can find it all inside ELA Unlimited!​