Aaron Lloyd

Resource Kit Part 6 - Summarizing and Synthesizing

EDU 4210

Summarizing and Synthesizing

Retelling to Summarize Information

This is one of the most basic methods to help students understand what and how

summarizing is. They will read or listen to a story and then they will be asked to retell

the story. When introducing this method it is important to cover what is important to

remember from the story. They need to remember the important parts of the story, then

need to retell it so it still makes sense, and cut out the non important information.

Students tend to be detailed in their descriptions and need reminder that this is only a

small copy of the story they read.

Reference - (Harvey and Goudvis, 2007, pg 181-182)

Summarizing the Content and Adding Personal Response

This strategy has the student read a piece of text and then produce a summary along

with their personal response to the text. An example of a way to have the students

practice is to take a single sheet of notebook paper and draw a line separating it into

half. They will use the top portion to write a summary of the text and on the bottom

portion they will write their personal response to the text they have read. This will give

them both practice summarizing and comprehension of the text by asking they to state

their personal response. This will also allow them to practice thinking about the text they

are reading while reading it.

Reference - (Harvey and Goudvis, 2007, pg 185-187)

 Aaron Lloyd
Resource Kit Part 6 - Summarizing and Synthesizing
EDU 4210

Reading for the Gist

This strategy has the students take notes while be read to keep track of the important

information from the text. These notes will be in the form of will be in the form of their

thoughts on the text, questions that they think of from the text, important parts that they

don’t want to forget, and parts that stick out to them as usual at that time. The teacher

needs to pause to allow students to write down their thoughts, as some are faster then

others, but with the limited time it will help the students practice organizing their

thoughts on the fly with limited time to work with. This strategy will allow students to

make connections to the text with their notes. When readers synthesize, they get the

gist of the text.

Reference - (Harvey and Goudvis, 2007, pg 187-188)

Writing as Synthesis: Personalities form the Past

This strategy has the students use biographies for the student to write in the first person

perspective. This will lead to the reader being able to better understand the

contributions of historical figures and gain insight into their lives. In this example each

student will be allowed to pick their own historical figure to research. Students will take

notes during their research of their historical figure. These will be their resources for

when they write a “first person” paper. The teacher will model how to take notes and

organize them so that they will be helpful in writing the paper. Having the students write

in the first person will help them connect to the project, because they will be speaking of
 Aaron Lloyd
Resource Kit Part 6 - Summarizing and Synthesizing
EDU 4210

the person they research. This person will be of interest since they were able to choose

the historical figure.

Reference - (Harvey and Goudvis, 2007, pg 190-193)

References

Harvey, S. and Goudvis, A. (2007). ​Strategies that work​. 2nd ed. Portland, Me.:

Stenhouse Publishers.