Teaching Harry Potter: Chapter Books
Key to working with chapter books as a class is ensuring that everyone keeps up with the reading. It sounds simple, but in practice, it’s not! However enthusiastic students might be, there’s always someone who hasn’t managed to do the homework or has missed a class.
I find that writing chapter summaries is an incredibly useful way to deal with this.
Chapter Summaries
The benefits of using chapter summaries is two-fold:
- They help students stay on track with the story, even if they’ve fallen behind. They can catch up in a matter of minutes.
- They’re great practice for focusing on key points in the narrative and expressing them in their own words.
Ideally, chapter summaries would be written by the students but writing a summary takes some practice so the first two or three should be modelled and can be turned into class activities. There are various ways this could be done:
- True/False Summaries
- I write a draft summary of the chapter, deliberately adding errors or extra details. Students work together to spot what’s wrong and fix it.
- Fill in the Gaps
- Sometimes, I write a summary with blanks for key pieces of information, and students fill in the gaps together.
- Put in Order
- I provide sentences from the chapter summary in jumbled order, and students rearrange them into the correct sequence.
- Picture Summaries
- I summarize chapters using pictures or emojis, and students turn them back into full sentences.
- Guiding Questions
- I give students a list of questions about the chapter. Their task is to answer them and then combine their answers into a coherent summary.
- Collaborative Writing
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I often have students work in pairs or groups to write summaries together, which sparks good discussions about what to include and what to leave out.
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Moving Forward
Once students get the hang of writing summaries, I assign them as homework. I like to pick an individual, pair, or group to write the next chapter summary to share with the class. Knowing that their work will be seen by everyone can be really motivating—students rarely skip this assignment!
I share all the summaries on a class platform so everyone has access to them. As well as recognizing their work, it’s also a practical way to ensure everyone has a quick and easy way to navigate the story.
A Few Things I’ve Learned
- Having a consistent structure helps. I use a simple summary template with prompts like Who? What? Why? to guide students. See below for my form.
- Sharing summaries is invaluable. It makes it easier for everyone to stay on track, especially if they miss a class or fall behind in the reading. I tend to use Google Classroom or a class Padlet, or email.
- Summaries are a great way to encourage students to reflect on new vocabulary and important themes in the book.
I find that chapter summaries are a real anchor for the course. They help everyone stay engaged with the book and improve their writing skills along the way.
