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Assignment #3: Complete the 4 part assignment format as you read, reflect, and respond to Chapter 3 – Summarizing and Notetaking
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A. Self Assessment of Current Beliefs and Practices: This component asks you to reflect on how and why you currently use the instructional strategies of summarizing and notetaking in your classroom. The intent of this is to activate your prior knowledge of your strategy use so that you can make comparisons as you read the chapter. Below are the questions to help you complete your self-assessment. (Complete – but do not post!)
• In what situations is it important for my students to summarize?
• What does summarizing help my students do?
• What do I do to help students understand and use the process of summarizing?
• What questions do I have about using summarizing in my classroom?
B. Read & Reflect “Research & Theory”: This portion of the assignment asks you to read chapter 3 and reflect briefly on your thinking after reading the “Research and Theory” section for summarizing and notetaking. (Complete – but do not post!)
C. Practice: Choose one of the specific “classroom practice” strategies or techniques shared in this chapter to teach to your students (If you are not currently teaching, you may share how you would use this strategy in your classroom) – please post a brief reflection of how this went to the posting labeled Week Three: Summarizing and Notetaking. Click on the “comment” link below.
D. Final Strategy Reflection: Use the following sequence of questions/promps to reflect on what you’ve learned about both the strategies presented in the chapter and what you’ve learned about yourself as both a teacher and a learner. Please post your brief reflection to the posting labeled Week Three: Summarizing and Notetaking by clicking on the “comment” link below.
How has the information you read in this chapter on summarizing affected your thinking about teaching and learning? What have you learned about yourself as a teacher and learner? Use the following questions to assist you in writing a brief strategy reflection:
• How has reading this information affirmed some of what you already knew about summarizing?
• What is something you now understand better about summarizing?
• How might you change how you use summarizing in your classroom?
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C. Practice: In one of my small reading groups, we just finished reading a non-fiction book about "How Chocolate is made". I decided to type out the book (double spaced) so the kids could work with me on summarizing on paper. Together we deleted some information, substituted some information and kept some information from our reading. We crossed off in pencil what we thought should be deleted. I had them use highlighters to highlight information we wanted to keep and we substituted where we felt it was necessary. The kids enjoyed discussing what needed to be crossed off and why they felt that way. They also had fun highlighting what they wanted to keep. I think they wanted to keep some things just so they could highlight more. I think they needed some time to play around with highlighters so the novelty of them would wear off. :) After this process, we wrote a small summary of the book.
D. Final strategy reflection: When I reflect on my education. I specifically remember being taught a few of these strategies. I wish I was taught more of them. There are some strategies that I had never heard of. College seemed to be the time when I felt I was a big note taker. In the chapter it talks about how verbatim note taking is perhaps the least effective way to take notes. I was a verbatim note taker all throughout college. I also was one of the type of note takers that would not have brief notes and I believe this helped me understand the materials better for tests. When I think of young children using these strategies, I think that just familiarizing the students with these formats/processes is a big accomplishment. Once they are learned, the real learning can take place.
You made me smile thinking of the students being so excited with the highlighters. I agree, "explore time" with new learning tools is really important so the kids are able to get down to the work at hand. :)
I felt that I was never really taught how to take notes or summarize. Or if I was, it never made sense to me. When I read this section I was excited to see some methods that I felt would be useful for students to learn and help them with their future years in school.
Linda Johnson
What a great idea, to summarize a book students just read and using highlighters too!
I have thought about teaching summarizing, but talked myself out of it. I realize how important it is for students to take notes. I am going to teach the Rule-Based Strategy tomorrow and will let you know how it turns out.
Linda Johnson
C. Today the class worked on their first Summarizing and Note Taking lesson (Rule-Based Strategy). Students were given a three-paragraph article to read silently. The class then read the article orally. Students said they were confused. They were not sure what information to delete, substitute and/or keep. The class slowly walked through the teacher-directed instruction.
D. In reflection, students will need additional lessons and practice. They need to try summarizing independently. It appears students are cautious of making mistakes. Next time, I will instruct students to work independently and will meet with each student independently.
Hi Linda,
I agree that this is a challenging skill to teach students, but your plans to support the students over time will def. help them. The more exposure and practice the easier it will become for them.
C. Practice: I would use the reciprocal teaching strategy to reinforce summarizing skills during a read-aloud session. I have subbed in a 5th grade class where the teacher has given students journals to record a summary of each chapter of the class’ read-aloud novel. Using the reciprocal teaching strategy would help all students strengthen their summary skills. I would perhaps model the strategy on the first day and then ask for a volunteer to stand in for the teacher during the next. I would expect input from other students as the student leader shares his/her summary, asks questions, clarifies areas of confusion, and invites others to share predictions. This would be discussion based, and we would write a summary that each student would copy in his/her journal. I could see starting this process at the beginning of the year, and as time progresses students would strengthen their summarizing skills enough to feel confident in writing their own summaries of the chapter read. This would be a practice that each student would be able to take a turn doing throughout the year.
D.Final Strategy Reflection: I can’t say that I remember learning how to summarize or take notes as a student; I just know that I did. I would always have a pen or pencil ready to take notes on lectures, films, readings and discussions. After reading this chapter, I do realize how every student needs these skills in order to be successful in school and life. I was just sharing this concept with a friend who remarked that she requires her daughter to tell her about a book that she has read in five sentences. Otherwise, she warns her daughter, others will perceive her as being boring. As a teacher, I need to be purposeful in planning opportunities for both these skills to be developed. Summarizing and note taking stress what is important, and students need to be able to demonstrate these skills at all levels and in every content area. I still would like to learn more about the webbing technique of taking notes since I went to school in the more linear time.
C.
I didn’t feel that the strategies listed in the book were applicable to first grade in my classroom at this time. Instead I decided to create a graphic organizer to model to show students how they help us to understand and remember what we read. We read a selection from our basal reader titled Amazing Animals. This selection talked about 8 different animals and specific features those animals possess that help them to live in their environments. I made a poster size version of the graphic organizer and filled out the first 4 animals in front of the class with their input. Next I had them continue reading the story with a partner to add in the last animals from the book. I think this really helped them to understand and comprehend the story better. I also like the gradual release of responsibility piece.
D.
Summarizing at this age (first grade) can be a tricky and it’s a hard skill for students. We know this especially when administering the DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment) when students go blank at the retell part. My team has been working hard to model summarizing and working on this skill with our students. One strategy we use is the “5 –finger Retell” and the model of the hand is especially helpful for students. I also like including graphic organizers when appropriate to add another tool for helping students to document important information. I definitely need to keep this strategy of summarizing evident in my daily routines and teaching practices because it’s so important. I need to explicitly teach this and allow opportunity for my students to practice with others, and independently too so they’re able to do this on their own, without the assistance of others around them.
A mini-lesson idea I got out of another professional book has you show students a bowl of cooked spaghetti noodles in water. You talk about how that bowl of water and noodles represents the whole selection or story. Discuss how not all that information is necessary to keep. Poor the bowl of water and noodles into a colander and then discuss the “filtering” process of only keeping the most important facts or bits of information. This is a great visual and hooks your kid’s interest right away.
Assignment Three
C. Practice:
During our literacy choice time my students use a vocabulary note taking organizer. The students have to fill in their vocabulary word and the definition in their own words. The students are able to use a dictionary to gain a deeper understanding of the word but then they must redefine it in student friendly language. The last two boxes are using the word in a sentence and drawing a picture of the vocabulary word in action. The other three ways that we take notes allow students to focus on the own thoughts, connections and anything they may be wondering. Students are allowed to use stickie notes, a blank bookmark used to keep notes on, and "4 square" which allows children to fill out their thoughts, connections, questions, and anything they're wondering. These note taking strategies encourage students to continuously take notes as they're reading a novel. They are not used to copy off the board but to enhance independent thinking.
I have also used the reciprocal teaching model. As a class we have used laminated cards that prompt summarizing, questioning, clarifying and predicting. After modeling, I monitored group work selecting a student leader to be the speaker. Eventually the students became independent enough to lead their own groups with out constant monitoring.
D. Final Strategy Reflection
I only wish that I would've had such a variety of note taking tools. Coming from a small town, I do not feel like we had adequate college preparation. My first few lectures in college were definitely a wake up call, resulting in quite the struggle as I learned the hard way in note taking.
As we enter the last month of school, my students seem more comfortable with our note taking strategies. It has not been all smooth sailing, but with continuous modeling, repetition and consistency we are finally mastering the skill of efficient note taking!
C Currently I do have my students summarize and take notes regularly. Some of you mentioned College being a wake-up call when it came to taking notes during lectures. I felt this in High School and often speak to the students about how important it is that they learn to take quality notes and eventually fast ones too. Note-taking is one of my primary literacy goals, the students keep what I call a "Sciencelog," which is a spiral notebook reserved for note-taking and other classwork in Science class. When I first started teaching, I discovered very quickly that most students do not know where to begin when taking notes, they either take too few notes or write everything down without processing any information. I thought about this seriously and realized that I use a strategy while I take notes that could benefit them. Over the last five years I have updated the strategy and this is now what it looks like: I call it, "reading for understanding." This strategy uses some of the ideas I read about in Chapter 3. The students pair up and read a section of the Science textbook together.
Here are the instructions for this strategy:
1) One of you read the first paragraph aloud, the other follow along. Help the student who is reading aloud if he/she struggles. Be kind and helpful.
2) Discuss the paragraph together. What ideas are the most important? Is there any vocabulary to define? Do you understand? Ask each other clarifying questions. Can you explain/summarize the paragraph? If you still do not understand, raise your hand and I'll come around and help you.
3) Write down the definitions and key concepts you have determined are important enough to write.
4) Move on to the next paragraph, switch roles.
5) Repeat until the reading assignment is over.
As the year progresses, the students discover that writing little or verbatim really does not work. They also discover that if they do not take the partner discussion seriously and force themselves to process the information it will not matter how much they write. This becomes quite obvious to them when they use their notes on tests/quizzes, mine are open-note. Students discover that unless they have actually taken the time to thoroughly 'read for understanding' it will not matter what notes they have in front of them during the exam. The students who take it seriously develop an appreciation for the strategy and reap the benefits by actually learning through reading, understanding the material and finding more success on exams. The students are also now able to take notes more quickly and even follow the steps individually instead of in pairs. We discuss as a class that in the future most of their quizzes/tests will not likely be open-note so they will indeed be forced to write notes in order to study the mounds of reading they will be assigned.
D.The data presented in this chapter was encouraging to me because I know based on my own experiences how important summarizing and note-taking is. I appreciate the many examples presented in the chapter. The school year is almost over and I will have to wait until the Fall, but I plan on finding ways to improve on my methods piece by piece. I especially liked the strategy from Chapter 3 where the Science teacher models how to cross off and highlight material from a reading. I think this would add a concrete and helpful element to the "reading for understanding" strategy I have been developing the last five years. Initially I borrowed this textbook from a colleague, but I am enjoying it so much that I purchased it on my Kindle. I know I will be reading this and other chapters many times over to help improve my teaching methods.
Hello Barbie,
Great lesson plan to teach summarizing by using the reciprocal teaching strategy. Students could def. use the practice throughout the year to become proficient in their summaries. You are right, that students need to be able to demonstrate these skills at all levels and content areas.
Hi Jennie,
Def. modify the assignment to work for you and your students! I love the pasta mini-lesson. Visuals are so powerful for students and aid them in their comprehension!
Meagan,
I don’t feel I learned how to take notes when I was in high school either. I would highlight my entire text, (color-coded mind you) and then try to take notes from my color-coding. I’m not sure when or how I finally learned to take notes, but somewhere along the way I finally did. It is an important skill to be sure and it’s great you have been working on it with your students this year. I feel that all middle and high school teachers need to model and provide opportunities for the students to practice this vital skill.
Michaela,
Thanks for sharing your Reading for Understanding strategy. As I’ve worked in a high school this year for the first time, it became apparent to me how sorely the students need to learn how to summarize and take notes. In fact, I was working with our department head this entire year on these skills as well as other research methods. We’re glad you are finding the text useful and a resource you plan to revisit!
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