Writing Committee August 6, 2012 St. Mary Church Hamburg, PA SUMMARY WRITING Writing Committee August 6, 2012 St. Mary Church Hamburg, PA

WHAT IS A SUMMARY “Summarizing is the process of distilling information down to its most salient points to aid in understanding, memorizing, and learning the relevant material.” Classroom Instruction that Works, 2nd Ed. p. 78

“A summary is a long text distilled to its essentials, the key points worth noting, without examples and details. The specific form, the sentence structure and the vocabulary, has been changed, but the main ideas remain.” http://busyteacher.org/6214-how-to-teach-summary-writing.html

Summary Writing Difficult academic skill Need to be explicitly taught SUMMARIZING IMPROVES: reading skills vocabulary skills writing and editing skills cooperative learning skills

What can we do? Set our students up for success. Be flexible.

Steps to Teaching Summary http://busyteacher As a class, read a short selection. Have students underline the main ideas as they read. Once students have their texts marked up, open the discussion of summaries.

Steps to Teaching Summary Cont. busyteacher.org 4. Provide an example. 5. Discuss the ideas. 6. Focus on 5 main ideas.

Steps to Teaching Summary Cont. 7. Work on ordering the sentences and connecting them with transition words. 8. Paraphrase the sentences. 9. Teach the language of summaries. 10. Finalize. Have students practice in pairs

HOW TO WRITE A SUMMARY Source: http://www.enotes.com/topics/how-write-summary

eNotes – Write a Summary Divide and conquer. Read. Reread. One sentence at a time. Write a thesis statement. Ready to write. Check for accuracy. Revise.

Classroom Instruction that Works CLASSROOM PRACTICE FOR SUMMARIZING: Teach the rule-based summarizing strategy Use summary frames Engage students in reciprocal teaching

Rule-Based Summarizing Strategy Source: CITW, 2nd Ed. Take out material that is not important to understanding. Take out words that repeat information. Replace a list of things with one word that describes them. Find a topic sentence or create one if it is missing.

Use Summary Frames http://www.mcrel.org/pdf/instruction/5992tg_what_works.pdf Chapter 3

Summary Frames “a series of questions designed to highlight the critical elements of specific text pattern.” Enables the student to focus on a variety of text genres.

Six Basic Summary Frames narrative topic-restriction-illustration definition argumentation problem-solution conversation