"General Idea in Brief Form" -(Jones, 2012)
What is Summarizing? |
How is it Beneficial? |
Summarizing teaches students how to take the most important part of the text or story and put it into their own words. Students should first read a given text or story and then summarize it in the way they comprehend it. Summarizing can be in done in every different type of structure/text. It can be made from a very long or a very short text. It should also come after reading the entire given text. Summarizing can be used individually, with a group, and/or for whole group activities (Reading Rockets).
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Teaching students to summarize allows them to reduce the information. By doing this they are practicing comprehension by choosing what is important and what is not (Marzano, 2015). It also helps students remember the important information. It also makes students focus on key details and realize what is worth paying attention to. Being able to recognize and summarize structures in their reading will enhance their ability to comprehend many different texts (Marzano, 2015). This strategy can be used in almost any content area (Reading Rockets).
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The following website provides summarizing techniques, descriptions, and activities to practice bettering comprehension skills. https://wvde.state.wv.us/strategybank/summarization.html
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Shaun Macleod is a speaker who describes exactly what a summary is and the components that should be included when writing one. He explains how a viewer who did not read the original piece should still be able to take away the important information. Depending on the age, this would be a great video to use with the middle school students.
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Summarizing Strategies that Work: |
Writing Standard |
Strategy #1: Clarify What's Important
-Help students discern the essential structures in a text. Strategy #2: Familiarize Students with Multiple Text Structures -Expose them to different types of texts: Description, generalization, argument, definition, comparison, and problem/solution. Strategy #3: Help students recognize layers -Expository structures will help them comprehend short passages. Long texts have layers that are each represent a unique comprehension task. Strategy #4: Encourage Graphic Representation - The more subordinate an example is to the generalization the better. Strategy #5: Review essential terminology -If there is organization to a text as a generalized pattern, students will more likely comprehend that section. (Marzano, 2010). |
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.9
Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research. This standard could be used while summarizing a text. Students are taking information from the text to support questions, predictions, and/or to create a reflection on what is going on in the text.
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This video would be extremely engaging for students. However, a teacher would have to be careful for which grade because it would be "too young" for upper middle school. This video gives a good example of what a summary is and how to create one from a given story.
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