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Return
to Table of Contents for More Strategies INTRODUCTION: Each semester,
students in my Basic Writing classes struggle with their assignment to summarize
a 2-4 page article from a source such as a text book, academic journal or
reputable website. To write an effective summary, students must understand
the concepts of main idea, major and minor details, and inferences.
Because developmental writers have very little experience using these skills,
writing the summary can be a very intimidating task for them. After years
of experiencing failed teacher-centered lessons on main idea, major and minor
details, and outlining, I decided to listen to research: students learn better
and retain that knowledge longer when they can make connections to prior
knowledge, when they can experience learning a skill in a variety of ways, and
when they are introduced to new information or skills in gradual steps.
Within the discussion below, I’ve described several activities that, when done
in sequence, I have found effective for teaching summarization. These
introductory activities would be appropriate in many academic classes,
especially those in which students are asked to summarize their reading
assignments such as a journal article or book chapter. PURPOSE: To help students…
SUPPLIES
SETUP
DIRECTIONS Activity One
(15-20 minutes) 1. In partners or small groups (no
more than 4 people), students read the children’s story assigned to their
group. 2. In their small group,
students record the details to help them retell the story to the whole class
while keeping in mind the following:
3. Each group shares the summarized
version of its story with the whole class. 4. After each group reports to the
whole class, members are asked which details they thought were pivotal to
understanding the story and which could be left out. They are also asked
to defend their choices. Activity Two
(40-50 minutes) 1. At the beginning of class, all
students watch an episode of Full House (or similar sit-com like The
Cosby Show, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, or Daria). Choose a show that
is linear, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Programs like
Seinfeld or The Family Guy, while entertaining to watch, are often
difficult to summarize. Once students have mastered the skills related to
writing an effective summary, instructors can challenge the class to summarize
more complicated plot lines from these or similar shows. 2. While watching the show, students,
either individually or in pairs, take notes that will help explain what happened
in the episode. 3. After the episode, the class
creates a list, in order, of the most important events that happened in the
show. These are major details. 4. After identifying the major
details, students generate a list of events that were not critical to
understanding the show. These are minor details. For example, the
reader/viewer may need to know that on The Cosby Show Sandra and Elvin
are having a fight. The reader may not need to know that Elvin brings
flowers when he apologizes. The important details are that they fought and then
made up later on. Students may need to add or move information from the
lists in order to create an accurate summary of the major events that happened
on the show. 5. Students then use the major details
to write a paragraph that summarizes the show. This can be completed
individually or in pairs. Having student write individually provides a
formative assessment to see if students are learning the skill. Having them
write in pairs, however, can make the activity less stressful as students can
ask each other questions and offer suggestions. Activity Three
(20-30 minutes) 1. Provide students with the printed
lyrics of a song that tells a story and then play the song. I use a
variety of genres to appeal to students’ preferences in music. I also
use some older songs so that students don’t assume that they already know what
the song is about. Songs I have found effective include The Pina Colada Song,
The Devil Went Down to Georgia, Hotel California, Piano Man, and Bust A Move. 2. As they listen for the first time,
students should follow along with the written lyrics without marking on them. 3. The second time the song is played,
students highlight which details are needed to retell the story while keeping in
mind what the song is about and what major details led them to that conclusion? 4. Divide the class into groups of
three or four students. In these groups, students work together to write a
paragraph about the events in the song. While working, they must discuss
major and minor details, using their highlighting as reference. The summaries
are shared with the large group followed by discussion about which details were
major and which were minor. Activity 4
(20-30 minutes) 1. After students have completed one
or more of the first three strategies, students move on to a more difficult
task. They now read a short article from an academic journal, newspaper, or text
book, and apply the same process to this reading that they used for the
children’s story, sit-com, and/or song. 2. They read through the article once
and then reread to highlight the major details. 3. Finally, students pull the
highlighted information from the article to create an outline and use the
outline to write a summary of the article. OUTCOMES Prior to using these methods, 45% of my
students failed to complete the summary assignment or received a grade below a
75. When I simply told them the steps of how to write a summary, many of
my basic writing students found the task overwhelming. It became a common
pattern for some students to stop attending class when the summary assignment
was given, thus sacrificing an entire semester’s efforts and grades based on
one challenge. After using the learner-centered strategies
described above, the percentage of my students who failed to complete the
summary assignment or who received a grade below 75 decreased from 45% to 19%.
By providing an opportunity for students to be successful early in the lesson,
they were apparently more able to approach the assignment with confidence.
Breaking the task into smaller steps and having students complete those steps
prior to the “real” assignment gave students confidence that they could
summarize the information in more academic writings. LESSONS LEARNED Moving from a teacher-centered to a
learner-centered classroom was not easy for me. Learner-centered lessons
require time-consuming planning; however, I have found that students are more
motivated to learn and take responsibility for their own learning when I provide
them with an activity that allows them to learn from their own experience
(rather than my simply telling them what to do and how to do it). Most students know how to summarize, but
they may never have been asked to do it with an academic text. Students can tell
me about a great party they attended, a good movie they watched recently, or
what happened on CSI. By using this prior knowledge as a hook, I
helped them see the task of reading an article and then writing a summary as
less daunting. Connecting new learning to prior knowledge
and scaffolding the learning of new skills are not new teaching strategies, but
they are two that I had often overlooked. I have found that students’ comfort
levels for acquiring new knowledge increases significantly when they can connect
it with familiar past experiences. When students feel less threatened by the
material being presented, they are more likely to take risks and internalize the
information for future use. Hence, the new knowledge becomes prior
knowledge that can be applied to the next new skill. --Lisa Tittle, Faculty, English, * * * * * The ON COURSE NEWSLETTER publishes innovative strategies for helping students become active, responsible learners. To subscribe to this bi-weekly (monthly in the summer) e-newsletter, click here and send the resulting e-mail. No need to type anything. Our computer will automatically add your return address to the list of subscribers. You're always in charge of your subscription, with a subscribe/unsubscribe link in every newsletter. Have a best practice to share? Click here and request our publication guidelines.
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