SWBS: Supporting Students in Summarizing Fiction and Nonfiction Text

Somebody Wanted But So is one of 8 "fix up" strategies suggested by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst in Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading and Reading Nonfiction.  The blog will be highlighting several of the fix up strategies over the next weeks as we look for common strategies to utilize in supporting our readers. 

SWBS can be used with narrative and expository texts. Create a graphic organizer and chunk the text. Stop with students and fill in each box as you progress through the text. You can even create multiple rows for each main character in a fiction text or each historical figure when studying events or famous people in your field of study. 

The summarizing strategy can be adapted for use with nonfiction text, specifically information or expository text that does not include characters necessarily. The strategy transforms and becomes... 

Something Happened But/And Then

You will still create a graphic organizer and chunk the text, but it could look something like this instead: 

This strategy is quick and simple and highly effective when students struggle to summarize the text. Join us today after school for our last after school professional learning opportunity and we'll investigate content-specific ways to boost students' confidence in summarization.