A great skill to teach our children is to synthesize information and to retell it in their own words to someone else. This is a higher order thinking skill which requires a child to recall information, synthesize it and then put it into his or her own words. After reading a book together, ask your child to tell the other parent, a sibling, grandparent or other significant adult about the book that the two of you just shared.
Begin by providing prompts to the child such as, “Can you tell Nana what the name of our book was?” or “Who (what) was the book about?” Then say, “What happened at the beginning of the book?” Continue to prompt the child with questions like “Then what happened?” until the child has adequately summarized the beginning, middle and ending of the book. If you need to provide clues along the way that is fine too – especially in the beginning when your child is just learning this skill. Assist with suggestions like, “So, he went….where?” After a few times of prompting, your child will begin to understand how to summarize and retell the book in his or her own words in the correct sequence. This is a really important skill that helps a child develop strong comprehension as well as a good understanding that books have a logical order and sequence.
