1. The Five Finger Summary Strategy
Summarizing
The Five Finger Summary Strategy

2. What is summarizing?
Summarizing involves taking large sections of text and reducing them into shorter, concise passages.
Summarizing involves the key ideas or the “gist” of the story or article.
When summarizing, you should use your own words without changing the meaning of the writing, and you should maintain the plot’s sequence.
Remember to focus on only the most important details.

3. The Five Finger Summary Strategy
When
Where
What
The five finger summary is an easy method to quickly summarize any narrative piece.
It can be used for a page, for a chapter, or for an entire book.
WRITE IN IBOOK
Summary – a short restatement of a longer text in the reader’s own words.
Why
who

4. Let’s Practice…

5. Somebody… The main character. A group.
In the Three Little Pigs, the somebody is the three little pigs.

6. Wanted…
What is the main character trying to do?
What is the goal of the character?
This usually leads to the problem.
In the Three Little Pigs, the pigs wanted to have their own homes.

7. But…
This is the main problem of the story.
It is usually in the middle of a story.
It is the challenge facing the main character.
In the story The Three Little Pigs, the wolf keeps blowing down the pigs’ houses.

8. So…
This is the main consequence of a story.
It is also usually found in the middle of the story.
It can sometimes come before the “but.”
In The Three Little Pigs the pigs run to each other’s houses to escape the wolf.

9. In the end…
This represents the solution or resolution of the story.
It is usually at the end.
In The Three Little Pigs the pigs were safe in the house of bricks.

10. Example of the Five Finger Summary
The three little pigs wanted to build their own houses, but a wolf kept blowing them down one at a time. So, each piggy escaped to his brother’s house for safety. In the end, all three pigs were safe in the last pig’s brick house.

11. Let’s practice…Wilma Rudolph
Wilma Rudolph was the first American female runner to win three gold medals in the Olympic Games. Her performance was all the more remarkable in light of the fact that she had double pneumonia and scarlet fever as a young child and could not walk without braces until age 11.
Rudolph was born on June 23, 1940, in St. Bethlehem, Tennessee, the 17th of 19 children, and soon moved with her family to Clarksville. At an early age, she survived polio and scarlet fever, only to be left with the use of one leg. Through daily leg massages administered in turn by different members of her family, she progressed to the point where she was able walk only with the aid of a special shoe. Three years later, however, she discarded the shoe and began joining her brother in backyard basketball games. At Burt High School in Clarksville, while a sophomore, Rudolph broke the state basketball record for girls. As a sprinter, she was undefeated in all of her high school track meets.
In 1957, Rudolph enrolled at Tennessee State University and began setting her sights on the Olympic Games in Rome. In the interim, she gained national recognition in collegiate meets, setting the world record for 2000 meters in July of In the Olympics, she earned the title of the "World's Fastest Woman" by winning gold medals for the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash (Olympic record), and for anchoring the 400-meter relay (world record). She was named by The Associated Press as the U.S. Female Athlete of the Year for 1960 and also won United Press Athlete of the Year honors.

12. Let’s try the Five Finger Summary…
Who is the somebody?
Wilma Rudolph
What did she want?
She wanted to walk and run.
But?
She was sick with polio and wore a leg brace.
So?
Her mother and family massaged her legs daily, and she exercised her muscles every day.
What happened in the end?
In the end, Wilma was able to walk and run so well that she won three medals at the 1960 Olympics.

13. The Summary
Wilma Rudolph wanted to walk and run like a normal child, but she had polio and had to wear a leg brace. So her mother and family had to massage her legs daily. Wilma also exercised. In the end, Wilma not only learned to walk and run without her brace, she became a three time Olympic gold medal winner.

14. On Your Own… Now read the story “Thinking it Through” page 85
Use the Five Finger Strategy to summarize the story.
Be prepared to share your summary.