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Summarising for Kids: Find the Main Ideas with Pip

Summarising for Kids: Find the Main Ideas with Pip

Learn summarising: find the main idea of a paragraph, drop small details and sum up texts and stories in a few words on a balloon trip.

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What you'll learn

  • What a main idea is and how it differs from a detail
  • Why the main idea is not always the first sentence
  • How to drop small details and keep the important points
  • How to join each paragraph's main idea into one big idea
  • How to sum up a text in your own words using group words
  • How to summarise a story with Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then

Chapter by chapter

  1. Find the main idea of a paragraph Free to try

    Years 3–4 english · 1

  2. Tell important points from small details

    Years 3–4 english · 1

  3. Find the main idea across several paragraphs

    Years 3–4 english · 1

  4. Sum up a text in a few words of your own

    Years 3–4 english · 1

  5. Summarise a story with Somebody Wanted But So Then

    Years 3–4 english · 1

  6. Summary Champion challenge (10 questions)

See every English chapter in the chapter library

What the chapters cover in the national curriculum in England:

  1. Years 3–4 english: Understand what they read, in books they can read independently, by: identifying main ideas drawn from more than 1 paragraph and summarising these

About this adventure

Summarising for Kids is an interactive reading game that teaches children aged 7–9 how to find the main ideas across several paragraphs and sum them up in a few words of their own. It follows the Year 3 and 4 English curriculum in England.

Children fly Pip the owl's hot-air balloon to five islands. They tap the sentence that covers all the others, drop small details like sandbags, collect one idea from each paragraph and join them into one big idea. A main idea is what a paragraph is mostly about; details are the smaller facts that sit underneath it.

Later islands practise cutting extra words, swapping a list for one group word such as "fruit", and summarising a story with Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then. Every text can be read aloud, and a 10-question challenge checks what they have learned.

Questions and answers

What does summarising mean in reading?

Summarising means retelling the main ideas of a text in a few words, without all the small details. A good summary is much shorter than the original, keeps the important points in the right order and uses the reader's own words.

How do you find the main idea of a paragraph?

Ask what the whole paragraph is mostly about, then check that every other sentence fits underneath that idea. The main idea can come first, last or anywhere in between, and sometimes it is not written down at all, so you put it into your own words.

What is Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then?

Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then is a five-step way to summarise a story. You name the main character, what they wanted, the problem that got in the way, how they solved it and how the story ended.

What age is this summarising game for?

The game is made for children aged 7 to 9, in Year 3 and Year 4. It teaches the national curriculum statement on identifying main ideas drawn from more than one paragraph and summarising them, which is assessed later in the KS2 reading test.

What does the summarising game include and how long does it take?

The game has five islands and a final 10-question challenge, and takes about 40 minutes to play through. Children can pick any island from the map, every text can be read aloud, and each island ends with a short recap.

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