Integrating for Synthesis – Reading Beyond the Lines
Integrating Synthesis Skills:- In fiction compares and contrasts characters, story lines, events, and primary and secondary sources in order to make defensible judgments and interpretations.
- In non-fiction, compares and contrasts examples, facts, or events in order to make defensible judgments or interpretations.
- Recognize and describe cause-and-effect relationships.
- Integrates personal experiences, background knowledge, and/or content knowledge with the text to create a “synthesis” of text plus knowledge.
- Puts information in order to explain and analyze the text.
- Seek and compare multiple sources to analyze the text.
Making Connections
Making Something New
Synthesis means to compare and extend meaning from multiple sources. The reader must be aware of the structure of the text to see how parts work together, inform one another, or contradict one another. Readers synthesize to show how a text changes, develops, informs itself to build meaning. / Skills to be developed for interpretations are: (Grade 8)
- R3Ch: I CAN make inferences.
- R1Fa: I CAN aid my comprehension by accessing and integrating prior knowledge.
- R1Hg: I can aid my comprehension by analyzing the text.
- R1Hf: I CAN aid my comprehension by drawing conclusions.
- R1Ia/b: I can make connections.
- R1Ic: I can analyze the cultural and historical time frame
- R2Cb: I CAN use details from the text to identify literary elements.
- R2Cf: I can interpret behaviors, motives and consequences of the character’s actions.
- R2Cfg: I CAN evaluate the problem solving process of characters.
Synthesis is the interaction of parts to create a new picture greater than the sum of the parts.
The text itself + Our interpretation of the text + Our background and past experiences + Other texts
Synthesis questions look like:
•Compare and Contrast this character’s problems with the problems you have encountered in your own life.
•Compare the theme from this story with a current day situation or event / Synthesis is like making a cake:
- Assemble the ingredients
- Combine them in a bowl
- Bake the cake at 325 degrees for 35 minutes
- Add frosting.
To synthesize requires the reader to:
- Take a text apart by marking, listing, sorting, outlining information to explain.
- Compare and contrast information with contextual knowledge to make defensible interpretations.
- Make connections.
- Recognize and describe cause and effect relationships.
- Extend meaning beyond text’s literal boundaries.
- Compare and contrast information from multiple sources.
- Review critically their own reactions to an author’s ideas.
- Integrate personal experiences, background knowledge, and/or content-area knowledge with the text to create a synthesis of text plus knowledge.
- Examine multiple sources to create an integrated analysis.