Welcome to Week 1 of our new Skills Practice series. Though we plan to work with the New Jersey teachers Jonathan Olsen and Sarah Gross and their students this year, just as we did last year, we're still perfecting a format that works for both of their schools, so this edition is just an experiment. Please tell us what you think, below. We start with a basic - summarizing - and suggest trying it with an article about Mariano Rivera, in honor of the last home game of his baseball career. If your students aren't interested in baseball you can, of course, substitute any other article for this one. As the year goes on we expect to tackle skills both basic and advanced. Please let us know, below, what you'd like to see. Article: "A Final Bow for Rivera" by Jorge Arangure Jr. The piece begins: Your Task: Read the article and write a one- or two-sentence summary of what it says. Before you do the task: Times articles give you many clues about what an article is about even before you start reading. For instance, look at the headline: What hints does it give you about what you're going to read? Next, look at the main photo, reproduced at the top of this post, as well as this slide show of photos that accompany the article. What kind of story do the images tell you? Read the article with these questions in mind: What is this piece mainly about? What is the central message or idea? What details support that idea? As you go, underline the sentences or details you think are most important. What ideas are repeated throughout the piece, or described in many different ways? Finding those will often help you zero in on the "main idea" of a piece. Turn to a partner and practice describing the piece orally in a few sentences before you write. What are the most important ideas and details to get across? Then, listen to him or her do the same. What did the two have in common? What "main ideas" did you both emphasize? After you've finished: Above and Beyond: Find a Bonanza of Summary Examples on Any Times Section Front: Look at a variety of New York Times article summaries by going to any section front that interests you. To do this, go to NYTimes.com and click on a section like World, Technology or Arts, on the left-hand side of the home page. There you can see a short summary of the articles currently in that section. For instance, the Sports section on Sept. 20, 2013 included this summary: Pulling off the greatest comeback in America's Cup history, Oracle Team USA won eight straight races, dashing the title hopes of Emirates Team New Zealand. You might then choose an article you'd like to read from any section in the paper, and practice your summarizing skills with it. Don't cheat and look at the Times summary first, though feel free to compare after. Summarize Multimedia: Watch this interactive feature from The Times on how Mariano Rivera dominates hitters. Can you summarize a video the same way you did an article and explain succinctly to a friend what makes Rivera such an amazing pitcher? Or, try this with any other Times video or interactive that interests you. Play a Summary Game: Here are some recent summaries of Times articles pulled from section fronts. Can you match the headline to the summary? What clues helped you? Here is a PDF of this game if you'd like to hand it out to your students. Headlines a. "Ground Gives Way, and a Louisiana Town Struggles to Find Its Footing" b. "Peacock Feet" c. "Day Devoted to Hoisting Guinness Starts to Leave a Bitter Taste" d. "Scraping Away the Decades" e. "To Renovate or Not to Renovate?" f. "An Arm-Twister in the Oval Office" g. "Rutgers Updates Its Anthem to Include Women" h. Fat Chance Summaries Somewhere under all the ugly 20th-century additions was the simple 1850s-era home two Brooklyn designers had been searching for. Bryan Cranston is Lyndon B. Johnson in "All the Way," a play set immediately after President Kennedy's assassination. The university is the latest formerly all-male institution to bring its alma mater in line with its new demographics. Critics say Arthur's Day, which began in 2009, is nothing but an excuse for binge drinking. Almost nothing in Bayou Corne has been the same since a voracious sinkhole opened up in 2012, and a year later it's still growing, swallowing trees and belching methane. More than half the dogs in America are overweight, giving rise to diet and exercise programs. Is it more effective to cloak Shakespearean text in contemporary imagery, or to hew to a more "classical" line? View embellished sneakers from Pierre Hardy, Christian Louboutin, Maison Martin Margiela and more. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content. Answers to the Summary Game: a: 5; b: 8; c: 4; d: 1; e: 7; f: 2; g: 3; h: 6.