1. Summaries June Preszler TIE April 21, 2005

2. Summarizing  When we summarize, we take larger selections of text and reduce them to their bare essentials.  Bare essentials: the gist, the key, the main points worth remembering.

3. What Students Usually Do  Write down everything  Write down next to nothing  Write way too much  Don’t write enough  Copy word for word

4. What You Want Them to Do  Pull out main ideas  Focus on key details  Use key words and phrases  Break down larger ideas  Write only enough to convey the gist  Take succinct but complete notes  Strip away the extra verbiage and extraneous examples  Focus on the heart of the matter

5. Teaching Summaries  Keep in mind—it’s not easy  Hard to learn/hard to teach  Model repeatedly  Give students practice time

6. Tips and Tricks--1  Provide students with a selection  Ask students to take notes of important details  When students have finished, direct them to turn over the paper and write what they remember…without looking back

7. Tips and Tricks--2  Have students write successively shorter summaries, constantly refining and reducing  Begin with half a page, then two paragraphs, then one paragraph, then two or three sentences, then a single sentence

8. Sum It Up!  Students imagine they are placing a classified ad or sending a telegram.  Each word costs 10 cents, and then tell them they can spend "so much." For instance, if you say they have $2.00 to spend, then that means they have to write a summary that has no more than 20 words.  Adjust the amount they have to spend, and therefore the length of the summary, according to the text they are summarizing.  Pat Widdowson of Surry County Schools in North Carolina

9. Getting the Gist of It!  Students read articles.  Students then identify 5Ws and H.  Students complete a template.  Finally, students use notes to write a 20-word summary.  Once students have mastered writing a GIST using articles, the strategy is then applied to content area texts to support comprehension and summarizing skills.

10. Gallery Walk/Museum Tour  Use poster paper to create a visual that includes a graphic depicting your article.  List/arrange the 5 W’s and an H  Write your summary paragraph  Identify one member of your group as the speaker.  The speaker stays with the poster while other group members rotate around the room.  When members return to their original position, they “teach” the moderator about the other posters.