SUMMARIZE TEXT
Gail Boushey and Joan Moser present "summarizing" as a strategy for reading "comprehension" on their CAFE Menu - substantiating Fontas and Pinnell's summarization component of "comprehension within text." Through summarizing, readers boil the text down to its "bare essentials," thus capturing the most important parts of the text but in a more concise form so that it is easier to remember. Summarizing enables students to weed out the irrelevant material, so they comprehend the core of the text. With the importance of summarizing for students' reading comprehension stressed from two main contributors to literacy research, below are some specific strategies that can be used to teach summarizing to students. Boushey, G. & Moser, J. (2009). Ready reference form: Strategy - Summarize text; Include sequence of main events. In The CAFE book: Engaging all students in daily literacy assessment & instruction (p. 164). Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.
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4 or 7 RULES for SUMMARIZING Two procedures for summarization operate around two main ideas: the physical "strike-out" of irrelevant details so such is visually processed; and the condensation of the remaining main ideas via more general, "umbrella term" phrasing. A 2003 study presented four (4) steps to guide struggling students through summarization, since such a skill is "more than simple recall" so it requires explicit instruction. 1. Delete unnecessary details 2. Combine similar ideas 3. Condense the main ideas 4. Combine major themes into concise sentences However, combing the findings of two studies, a seven (7) step summarization procedure was also developed: 1. Select a topic sentence 2. Invent a topic sentence is necessary 3. Delete all examples and unimportant details 4. Delete repetitive material 5. Substitute a superordinate concept for a group of items/actions 6. Condense main ideas 7. Combine similar main ideas Gore, M.C. (2010). Key 60: Teach Summarizing. In Inclusion Strategies for Secondary Classrooms: Keys for Struggling Learners (p. 164-165). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
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SUMMARIZING WITH PICTURES With its effectiveness based on study with sixth graders and science article comprehension, this strategy benefits informational text reading and could support elementary and secondary students (since the participants in the representative sample qualifies for higher primary school and lower secondary). To summarize with pictures, students read a non-fiction text, summarize it through original illustrations, and then complete three types of comprehension questions as an assessment of their understanding. Students should be instructed to create drawings that would allow an uninformed, ignorant audience to grasp the main idea of the article. The questions test students lower-level, medium-level, and higher-level understanding. The lower questions test initial understanding, while the middle ones require students develop an interpretation of the text. The most advanced questions require students to take a critical stance. Most students drew summaries that consisted of either a single scene or a sequence of events. In the study, students test scores increased 8% when the reading was accompanied by drawing. And if looking just at student scores on the initial understanding questions - the ones that measured students' literal comprehension of the text - those scores improved the most. Summarizing with pictures motivates students, allows students to reflect on the reading, makes them read texts closer, and relieves the cognitive burden of written summaries. Elliott, J. (2007). Summarizing with drawings: A reading comprehension strategy. Science Scope, 30(5), 23-27. |
GIST
GIST (Generating Interaction between Schema and Text) is a summarizing strategy devised for expository text. There are three common characteristics of summary paragraphs: shorter than original piece, paraphrase author's words, and focus only on main ideas. The GIST strategy coaches students through the process of writing the type of summary known as the "precis." The "precis" is a summary usually 4-8 sentences long that contains the main points but little embellishment (in contrast to the "evaluation summary" in which a brief overview of main points is followed up by a writer's opinions and insights i.e. a book report). For GIST, the text is divided up into predetermined stopping points, and at each stop point, a single sentence summary is devised. At the end, all those single sentences are put together, and that is the summary. However, when students reread the sentences as a whole in that conglomerate paragraph, they should add in appropriate transition words to make the sentences more cohesive. To the left is a graphic organizer for the GIST strategy. Frey, N., Fisher, D., & Hernandez, T. (2003). "What's the gist?" Summary writing for struggling adolescent writers, 11(2), 43-49.
McKnight, K. S. (2010j). 56: Gist. In The teacher's big book of graphic organizers: Grades 5-12 (pp. 120-121). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. |
SUMMARY ORGANIZER The Summary Organizer strategy challenges students to identify the main ideas within a text and create a summary of the text based on the identified main ideas. After students identify main ideas, they must write supporting details on each of the lines shooting off of the main idea boxes. Secondary students should write direct quotes from the text as their supporting details in order to practice citing the text in their summaries. By using the Summary Organizer strategy, students get practice reading comprehension by identifying supporting details and main ideas from the text and writing a summary. McKnight, K. S. (2010i). 38: Summary organizer. In The teacher's big book of graphic organizers: Grades 5-12 (pp. 84-85). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
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