Using Summarizing in Writing to Learn Donna Alvermann, Ph.D. Department of Language & Literacy Education University of Georgia PowerPoint by Achariya Rezak

What is the purpose of teaching summarizing? Writing summaries is an important tool for comprehension because summarizing reinforces and consolidates many processes involved in learning from a text. Writing a good summary means that readers must know how to select and delete information, condense information, and transform it into writing.

Three commonly used summary strategies are: Hierarchical summaries: best used with text that is structured into headings and subheadings. REAP: Read text. Encode it in your own words. Annotate and write it down. Ponder what you wrote. GIST: Generating Interactions between Schemata and Text.

Implementing hierarchical summaries : 1. As a class, scan the reading to preview headings and highlighted vocabulary. 2. Together, develop a skeleton outline based on these text clues. 3. Then, read text using the outline as a reading guide. 4. Ask each student to compose main idea statements for the main points, adding details. 5. Finally, develop a key idea statement for the entire passage. This becomes the first sentence of the summary.

REAP: Acronym that stands for: Read text. Encode it in your own words. Annotate and write it down. Ponder the message. REAP can be any sort of annotation, from critical comments to personal reactions. Summary annotations are the easiest.

Implementing REAP: 1. As a class, show students a sample paragraph and annotation. Explain the annotation process that you went through. 2. Next, show three annotations of a text and let students choose the best of the three. 3. Finally, show students how to develop summaries from their own annotations. 4. After that, students can develop their own summary annotations and then analyze these summaries in small groups to develop a more complete summary.

GIST: Acronym: Generating Interactions between Schemata and Text. Used to produce progressively more condensed summaries of a text

Implementing GIST: 1. As a class, use a short, coherent expository paragraph, and ask students to retell the first sentence in 15 words or less. 2. Add the second sentence, and have students summarize the first and second sentences together in 15 words or less. 3. Continue until the entire paragraph is summarized in 15 words or less. 4. Then, have the class summarize an entire paragraph at one time. 5. Finally, students try the strategy on their own.

Example of GIST: Paragraph: Taboo topics: Cultural restraint on teaching social issues (Evans et al, 1999): Selection of subject matter in social studies has long been a concern of educational theorists and reformers. Over the history of social studies, many prominent thinkers have advocated curricular reform with greater emphasis on in-depth study of public or controversial issues. Despite the best intentions of social studies reformers over the years, a traditional, textbook-centered, fact-myth-legend approach to teaching history had continued to dominate the social studies curriculum (p. 218). Summary of first sentence: Educational theorists have long studied social studies subject matter selection. Summary of first two sentences: Educational theorists and reformers have studied subject matter selection and advocated teaching public or controversial issues. Summary of first three sentences: Even though educational theorists have advocated teaching controversial issues in social studies, a traditional approach prevails.

Helpful hints: Self-contained passages of expository text with explicitly stated main ideas and a clear structure are easiest to work with. The main ideas of a text aren't always obvious: point out that summaries should capture ideas that would be important to the author.

Summary: GIST, REAP and hierarchical summaries are three strategies used to summarize texts. These strategies will help reinforce and consolidate many comprehension processes involved in learning from text.

Reference Evans, R. W., Avery, P. G., and Pederson, P. V. (1999). Taboo topics: Cultural restraint on teaching social issues. The Social Studies, September/October 1999,