Summarizing and Synthesizing Activity Directions

Summarizing and Synthesizing Activity Directions

Sketch to Stretch

This lesson introduces students to the comprehension strategy sketch-to-stretch, which involves visualizing a passage of text and summarizing it through drawing. The strategy encourages diverse perspectives and fosters open discussion of various summaries. Sketch-to-stretch is first introduced, demonstrated, and applied in a whole-group session. Students are then placed in groups with similar instructional needs to practice the strategy. This strategy helps learners summarize the text through non-linguistic representations.

Gist Summary

Students read a selection and then identify journalism's "5 Ws and 1 H" (who, what, when, where, why, and how) and complete a template with the corresponding information they have found in the article. Finally, students use their notes to write a 20-word summary called a gist. The “Gist Summary” provides a format for writing summaries and practice in zeroing in on the main ideas and supporting details of a passage (i.e., the gist). Always read the text first and prepare your model summary

Somebody Wanted But So

This strategy helps students summarize information by recognizing the characters/people involved, plot/events, and conflicts. This works great for fiction texts, but also works with informational reading. This strategy also works well with Science by changing the headings to: Problem, Hypothesis, Testing, and Conclusion. Math teachers can change the headings to: Problem, Solution, Evidence, and Reasoning/Reflection. The students summarize their findings/reactions under each heading. The strategy gives students a little more guidance as to finding the most important points when compared to writing a traditional summary.

Super Summary

For this activity, go to the following website and look at page 26 for the organizer. There is no printable template provided. You must print from the website.

The organizer requires students to find the main ideas in the text and then combine those ideas into a short summary. This organizer works well for teaching students to write a typical summary. Also, check out the rest of the above website for some really great organizers.

Summary/Synthesis Form

When students think through information, put it into their own words, and react and respond to it, they are much more likely to remember it. This form includes one column for taking notes, one column summarizing the notes, and another for monitoring and merging their thinking with the information…synthesis!