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Assignment #3: Complete the 4 part assignment format as you read, reflect, and respond to Chapter 3 – Summarizing and Notetaking
ALL PARTICIPANTS PLEASE READ THE NOTE BELOW!!!
Although your course packet asks you to post to blog for parts A, B, C, and D…we are asking that you only post part D to the blog (especially since it's summer term and many of us aren't working with students). We’re also trying to make the blog more user-friendly and easier to read. Thanks!
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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24 comments:
I don’t know that I had thought about summarizing as a specific technique, before reading this chapter. It is something I did as a student, automatically, but I did it rather haphazardly and the techniques they outlined would have been very helpful to know, especially in college classes. I never thought of it as summarizing per se, but I have used these basic techniques, in a modified manner, for teaching math problem solving for many years. Telling students to eliminate the irrelevant information and underline those things that seem to matter, and note what question the problem is asking.
Now that I am more aware of the value of summarizing, I will look for ways to use it more in my class. Turning to Read Naturally, having them summarize their reading passages, would help with their comprehension of the passage. Using it to help find and/or create a topic sentence (as noted in the chapter) would really help them with the concept of main idea (a very difficult thing for many of my students). I like the idea of the substitute terms also, which aids in classifying and grouping like things, and adding to vocabulary. We can use this technique with many other non-fiction sources. I am really curious how well some of them will do and how valuable a process it will be for them. I will start this as a teacher modeled process, then move to a student/teacher co-process and then, hopefully for at least some of my students, an student only process. Some of the summary frames seem especially useful, and I can already see using the Narrative Frame questions when we next do a read aloud chapter book. I would make a large version for my white board for students (and myself) to refer to as we worked through it. Writing chapter summaries together as a class and posting/illustrating them around the room would help them see the sequence of events, the “bones” of the story. The Problem/Solution Frame seems like a great way to teach various real life and social skills. I really like the idea that it offers an opportunity to come up with more than one solution, and asks which one will most likely be successful. I want to make a short comment on note taking. Making copies of teacher notes for students, helps organize my students and also keeps me on track! When my students go to high school their IEPs often state they are to be given copies of teacher notes. I start this process in middle school to give them time to become familiar with the concept. I have also selected portions of the notes, blanking out important words and terms, creating a cloze passage. I provide some students (depending on ability) with a word bank for filling in the blanks. This makes a great, easy, formative/summative assessment. I want to try the outline/web the next time I am planning a unit. I tend to do one or the other, rather than both. Like so many of these ideas, reading about the research behind the technique (in an abbreviated form – very nice), helps me see the value of practicing it. It also encourages me to keep trying different things to help my students learn (and to keep them on their toes!).
Robin Rose
Lesson #3
Much of what I have read in this chapter are practices I have been trying to use in teaching. I have always placed a great emphasis and value in the practice of summarizing and note-taking. This chapter however, helped shed some light in how I could improve in utilizing these processes.
For me the application of this chapter was being applied more in terms of note-taking and summarizing in regards to a PowerPoint lecture in my chemistry class. I tend to use this as my way to introduce concepts and I tend to use the textbook just as a reference for students to use in case they are in need of additional information or guidance.
The one thing that I feel I have a better understanding of in note-taking is the idea of verbatim note-taking may not be the most ideal method for this practice. For me personally, I tended to fall into this category when taking science classes in college. I realize the research supports verbatim note-taking is probably the “least effective method to take notes” but I feel that this is a skill I was able to improve on as well as be able to focus in on any additional information or examples the professor gave at the same time. Obviously there are many different types of learners and what works does not work for everyone else.
Although, I do find it a bit contradictory in their first generalization that verbatim note taking is the least effective method of note-taking because students are so engaged in writing the information down that they are not really synthesizing it yet in their fourth generalization they say that the more notes taken, the better. I realize the intent of the fourth generalization is that the note-taker is expected to have gone through and synthesized the information in a more coherent form but if you are so occupied in this process as well it would seem you could miss important ideas or examples brought up in discussions. Again I realize that the intent of this chapter was more towards note-taking and summarizing from students reading on their own but I am trying to make this chapter applicable to my classroom practice. I think for me it is just getting these ideas written out so I can come back and try to identify solutions for some of these issues that I am already identifying.
For note-taking in my classes, I have used what I called guided notes when presenting chemistry powerpoints. These are printed powerpoints that have blanks in them for students to fill in key words or phrases that I feel are critical to the objective or the overall concept we are trying to learn. I have tended to emphasize that on top of filling in the blanks that students take in any other additional information or examples we might talk about in discussion during a specific PowerPoint slide. One of the techniques that I thought was applicable in my teaching practice was the use of “reciprocal teaching.” I like the idea of the stages of summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting for the use in finishing off a concept through PowerPoint and/or an activity/lab. I would modify this technique though and try to set up small work groups of varying skill levels designating certain roles for students to be responsible for. I am really drawn to the idea of the clarification part in a group setting. I feel that students that are afraid to speak or ask questions in front of the entire class may be more inclined to do so in a small group setting like this. In a way, this could also be a formative assessment by having the groups create a short summary with some directed questions that they would need to answer.
David Lee
Assignment#3: Summarizing and Note Taking
Thanks Robin and David for you comments about summarizing.
Robin - Isn't it funny how you can look back and try to remember how you actually learned as a student. I hopefully won't be disappointing any of my previous teachers when I say that I don't really remember too much explicit instruction happening, as you stated, no one ever specifically taught me how to summarize (or maybe I just don't remember). I think it's a great idea to use the passages from Read Naturally to work on summarizing using the Gradual Release of Responsibility for explicit instruction. They are small and manageable chunks of text for any students to use, but especially your clientele.
David - I think your comment about "different learners"holds a lot of weight and students should each have the opportunity to use what works best for them. It's the best teachers who share different learning strategies with their students so that they can decide with guidance, which best supports their learning style. I especially like the idea of using reciprocal teaching as a cooperative scaffold in your classroom. I think that this format would really generate some great critical thinking.
Assignment #3 Summarizing and Note Taking
It is interesting to read the chapter, read the comments from Rose and David, to re-read and comment on my own teaching and learning. I have connections to some of the strategies as a Graduate Ed student, and I can see the weakness I have in teaching these strategies to my English Language Learners. My perspective is different from David and Rose, in that I teach elementary students who are learning English as a Second Language. Much of this is difficult for them to understand.
Summarizing can be a very difficult skill for elementary students. It is hard for younger children to understand what is extra or trivial in their reading. Analyzing what is important and eliminating the redundant is a high level skill for people who are nine years old; especially when navigating a new language.
I believe that modeling these strategies and practicing them together would be the best approach for students in my school. As a fourth grade teacher, I don’t believe I did this very well. I think I would model once, and hope that the students would understand and use the strategy.
I know now, that the students need multiple opportunities to practice as a group to begin taking the strategy to heart. I especially like Figure 3.2 as an example that I could use with my fourth and fifth grade students. The visual image of the text in its original form along with the edited text is nice for the students to see. I am going to work with teachers to add this strategy in to their teaching of content.
The “Rule Based” Strategy is a nice way for students to look at steps for summarizing. I can see this as a possible strategy for my Level 4 Advanced English learners in the fourth and fifth grades. The list of steps is nice for them to reference.
Delete trivial material
Delete redundant material
Substitute super ordinate terms for lists
Select the topic sentence
Note taking was never a skill I taught very well as a fourth grade teacher. I am excited to try the strategies in Note Taking with my English Language Learners next fall. I am hoping to work with the Fourth and Fifth Grade teams of teachers to add Teacher Prepared Notes to their teaching strategies. I think that this would be extremely helpful for our older elementary students in preparation for Middle School. I think the outline format on Figure 3.12 would really help our students organize their thinking and see what the teacher is expecting them to learn.
Additionally, I am excited to use the Combination Technique for student note taking. I am a very visual learner, but I also need to write out my thoughts. If I can present this Figure 3.15 to students, I think it will help them to see and internalize their understanding of a concept. I think that having to stop and make a visual along with the written notes will help to solidify their understanding of an idea.
Assignment Three: Summarizing and Note Taking – Paula Stepankowsky
As a business journalist for 25 years before I went into teaching, taking notes has become automatic. I can’t imagine NOT taking notes, although it is clear that students in middle school must be told to take notes – and shown how to do so effectively – for the greatest impact.
It was good to read about the research basis for both summarizing and note taking, something I was familiar with before but had not considered in a systematic way. The research showing both summarizing and note taking helps cement concepts in students’ minds does affirm activities I ask my students to do in their English notebooks. For example, when we read novels, I require them to take notes using Active Reading strategies every night for that day’s assignment. I check their notebooks to see what they are writing, and there is a direct correlation between the quality of the notes and test results that show comprehension about what we have read. When we are reading a more difficult text, such as Romeo and Juliet, I also ask them to do a short summary of the day’s reading in their notebooks to check for comprehension along with class discussion.
About summarizing: As presented in the chapter initially, especially with the rule-based strategy format, I would consider this type of summary to be more “editing” than summarizing. By editing, I mean taking an initial expository essay or paragraph and then going through the process if deleting trivial or redundant material, using broader terms and rewriting it to include a topic sentence if it is missing. This is a process I ask students to use to refine their own writing.
The section on summary frames is something I hadn’t seen before, and I see that some of the six frames can be more useful in certain subject areas. For example, the Narrative Frame closely parallels the analysis of the elements of fiction I introduce in the 6th grade: plot, characters (protagonist, antagonist, etc.) setting, theme, plot, types of conflict, etc. When we read any text, we always consider these elements, and I can see that using a frame like this will help students remember what they have read. In the same way, the Argumentative Frame is something that could be used to teach the persuasive essay, something we do in the 7th grade. It might prompt students to think in different ways if I used some of the other frames, the problem/solution frame or the topic restriction frame for example, that would seem to fit better with science or math concepts.
Reciprocal Teaching takes four of the five Active Reading strategies I use (only visualization is left out) and asks students to lead a discussion in groups. While I have had students do this individually in their notebooks, I haven’t used the group approach, which is something I would like to try in my classroom this fall.
About note taking: The book makes four very good points about note taking, and, as I mentioned before, I am a big fan of notes. Just like David, however, I do wonder how the authors would reconcile aspects of point No. 1 (limit verbatim note taking) with aspects of point No. 4 (the more notes taken the better). Ideally, an experienced note taker would be able to write down important notes verbatim, but be able to analyze instantly how relevant the information is to the point at hand.
Of the note-taking strategies presented, my students would tend to use the informal note-taking outline as that is how I present information on the doc cam when I am introducing a topic such as the expository essay. While webbing has its place, students who use that really have to take that information and put it in an outline form, I have found, for best comprehension. I had not seen the combination technique before, and I think I will introduce that idea to my students in the fall.
Being able to effectively summarize is obviously an extremely important skill for students of all ages to learn. It makes complete sense that in order to do this, they are identifying, analyzing and understanding the most important information they are learning. So the importance of teaching this strategy is essential.
It is interesting to learn that there are actually several different ways to teach this strategy; sub-strategies if you will. I use a form of the Narrative Summary Frame when teaching this strategy to my first grade students. I see now that my students would benefit from some of the other practices.
I agree with Erin in that summarizing is a very difficulty skill for young learners to understand, and lots of modeling and practice, as a class would be the most effective way to teach it. Utilizing the Narrative Frame in the form of story maps are something I regularly teach, but I will focus on using other summary frames as well. I can envision using a form of the Topic-Restriction-Illustration frame and even the Definition frame to help students summarize and make sense of content information.
I will also try to incorporate the rule-based strategy more explicitly. The kids love using highlighters to emphasize “important information” in content rich poems used to teach many of our subject-based integrated units. It will be easy to use this format to model how to delete trivial, redundant material and to substitute superordinate terms.
A note on Note Taking: Writing in general is a very developmental skill that most 6 year olds are in the process of learning. Throughout the school year they will make varying degrees of progress, from learning to grasp a pencil to writing 2-3 cohesive sentences. I feel that modeling simple note taking would be the most effective way of introducing young students to this strategy. I tend to use more visual representations of information due to the nature of young learners, but I will add some very simple informal outlines, if nothing but to expose them to different forms of recording information.
Theresa Muller
Assignment #3
Summarizing and Note Taking
Assignment #3: Summarizing and Note Taking
Marika Conrad
I know I’ve done some great things with summarizing and helping my students understand the structure of paragraphs—topic sentence, supporting details, and wrap up sentence. Understanding that structure helps them with their paragraph summaries and writing compositions, but it still doesn’t teach them how to pull the information from the text to create that structure for a summary. I had never thought about having them take a short piece of text and cross out information to write a summary. I’ve always had them write the information for their summaries in “their own words,” but the idea of crossing out information, keeping some information, and replacing some words is very concrete and applicable to my 5th graders.
I really like the “rule-based” strategy and feel like creating a chart with the rules, modeling this strategy, practicing it whole-group, practicing it in small groups/partners, and then moving to individual application would be really helpful in supporting my students in becoming strong summarizers. The rules lay out clearly what I’ve hoped my students could get out of my summarizing lessons in years past. I look forward to trying that clear cut application strategy for summarizing this fall.
The different frames included in this chapter are great reference points for creating summaries across the curriculum. The narrative frame was the one I was most familiar with, as summarizing is so often a part of responding to literature. The definition frame would also be a great one to use in responding to learning new vocabulary, especially in science and math. I can also see myself using the problem/solution frame with my students often—both for writing about literature, responding to materials from our social studies text, and for solving classroom concerns or problems. I like the structure provided to help students create a paragraph summary that applies to the topic being asked to summarize about. I feel like I’ll need to reword some the questions in the summary frames to be more student friendly for my ten and eleven year olds, but overall, they will be a great jumping off point to supporting students in summarizing a variety of materials.
The area of this chapter I know I need to focus more on next year is note taking. The text mentioned that writing down everything being said is ineffective, but that writing down more notes is better than writing down fewer. I always felt that having more notes helped me study and remember more of the information, as I was able to see how information linked together. But, copying information down from the board can be painstaking for some students. Some 5th graders are still fairly slow writers and the look up, look down, write, look up again process always takes longer than I anticipate it to.
I like the idea of using teacher prepared notes and leaving blanks in the notes for students to fill in as we discuss the information or after reading the information from the text. I’ve also had students take informal notes along with me on information so that they’ve had practice with seeing ways to organize information as it’s presented. The last technique I really liked was the combination notes technique. I love that there is a place for students to record notes, record the information in an illustration, and then a place to record a summary on that day’s learning. The students have to interact with the information multiple times in this task versus just writing the notes down once. The more times students can process the information, the more likely they are to remember it!
As a fifth grade teacher, taking notes isn’t a huge part of what we do, but it is an element of learning. I want to make sure I’ve done my part to expose students to different styles of note taking and to repeated practice in taking notes so that they are prepared to be successful in this area in middle school and beyond.
Assignment 3: Summarizing and NoteTaking
Amy Ryan
I was excited to read this chapter. Summarizing and note taking are areas I have been working on using more in my classroom. I didn’t think of it so much as a processing/synthesizing act, but more as a study skill that kids need to have practiced before they go on to junior high. Now I know how valuable these skills are from a learning perspective.
I liked the frames that were shown. They will really help simplify the process. The rule-based strategy is also helpful. As I have tried to teach my students to summarize and take notes, I have done research to look for ways to make these skills easier for kids. Specifically, what information is important in a passage? For students who struggle with comprehension, this is very tricky. I was surprised at how little good information I could find on HOW to teach these skills, so this chapter is great! I will now feel more confident in teaching my students these skills, and using them across the curriculum. This chapter provides the structure that I have been looking for. I look forward to teaching them that using these skills helps deepen their learning by making them synthesize information.
Erinn, Paula, Theresa, Marika, and Amy – Thanks all for your comments on summarizing.
Erinn – I completely agree that your students especially benefit from using the gradual release of responsibility (I do, We do, You do) with many all these strategies. I say “especially” benefit for your students because in reality, all student would benefit from teaching with a gradual release. Your students in particular will need to spend more time with scaffolded support in the modeling (I do) and shared and guided practice (We do) as they are being immersed in a new language. The rule based strategy definitely makes the steps to summarizing very concrete for your English Language Learners, as well as making any new learning visual for your students!
Paula – I can understand how you view the Rule Based strategy for summarizing to be more a practice in editing, but it see it truly as a scaffolding, or stepping stone to move kids towards independence in summarizing. It is possible by your grade level that your students don’t need these scaffolds in place to be able to summarize successfully??? I’m glad that you find that the frames and combination techniques might be something that you would look to incorporate into you instruction next year.
Theresa – Summarizing is a difficult skill for even 3rd graders to gain control over. As I stated for Erin, you would probably spend the majority of your summarizing instruction in the modeling and shared or guided practice stages to best support your learners. A short text such as a poem like you suggested, is the perfect piece to use as begin to develop this thinking with your first graders!
Marika – 5th grade is a great grade level to truly support kids in being able to summarize text independently. It’s a great idea as Paula mentioned trying to use several of the strategies such as “rule based” and frames in the chapter to support your students’ growth in summarizing. As students gain better control over summarizing and determining important information for summaries, their abilities in note taking will also grow.
Amy – I’m very glad that this chapter provided such great instructional support for you. I think it’s important to keep in mind (as other participants have mentioned) that it’s best to begin with using shorter texts as well as to use these strategies to support thinking across content areas.
Week Three: Summarizing and Note taking—Ashley Madison
Ugh—summarizing and note taking: the thorn in my side. Especially when it comes to research. Like most teachers, I put off research until the end of the year. This strategy originates from the idea that by the end of the year, you know your students well enough to know how they write so you can easily identify if writing is not “in their own words.” Reading this chapter made me laugh at myself, because after teaching seventh grade writing for seven years, I have come to the conclusion that seventh graders are developmentally incapable of taking notes in their own words. Apparently not. Thanks, Mr. Marzano. I guess it is good news. It’s funny, my students seem to understand summarizing fiction, but when it comes to non-fiction, especially what you have to read to do research, it’s a different story. My ever-so-frustrating end-of-the-year research project has undergone several metamorphoses, but I still haven’t landed on something that works quite the way I want it to. While this chapter did not necessarily offer me anything particularly insightful or useful for research, I have a couple of new ideas about how to tackle it, as well as ideas for other note taking in my class.
First of all, for research, I like the idea of tricking the students into thinking it is fun by telling them how much information they can delete when they read something (the “rule-based” strategy). They should love this. I will definitely want them to have a copy of some sort, so they can literally scratch stuff out. What fun. As far as note taking during class, despite it being highlighted as the “least effective way of taking notes,” I definitely do a few verbatim note-taking activities that I am not going to change. However, I follow them up with synthesizing activities, so I think this works, too. Middle schoolers, again, are just not quite there yet when it comes to independently listening, synthesizing, then writing something down. They are way too into socializing and trickery. Perhaps it is partially the culture of my school, but if I told them they did not have to write down everything, they would pick one word, write it down, and consider themselves hilarious. My students definitely need a little more structure. The teacher-guided notes are also something I use, but again, if I just hand it out to them, they’ll never read it. SO, I have students follow along and highlight the important parts in those to make sure they are actually thinking about the concept being taught.
I found this chapter helpful and I am excited to try some of these strategies. One idea I’ve used to help kids write a summary is called Somebody, Wanted, But, So. It is great for fiction to reinforce story elements, but I realize I need to explicitly teach these foundation skills (delete, substitute and keep information), or the Rule-Based Strategy to help kids become independent at summarizing. For the most part, I will use the “I do, We do, You do" strategy a lot. This will require repetition and practice, but I am excited that I now have a plan. I will most likely use the Narrative and Definition Frames the most, but the Reciprocal Teaching idea may work later on in the school year. I too, struggle with research projects and always question myself after I’m into them after a week. I have tried every way to teach note-taking with some success. I’ve tried creating a frame or questions. For example, we’ve done animal and president reports and I provide the questions, they just have to jot down a note or two, then create paragraphs, and it is still hard for my students. I may use a modified outline in the future and I’ve used webbing. I know I need to be very thoughtful about what I want my students to know, and then provide scaffolds for them. I know that the skills of summarizing and note-taking need to be directly taught and practiced for my students to be successful.
This chapter was eye opening for me and I can’t help but reflect back to my years in school as a learner and wonder, “Why do I not remember being taught strategies for these skills?” I thought for years that I just wasn’t good at note taking and summarizing. As I read this chapter I wish I would have had a teacher like Mrs. Zimmers who realized her students needed to be taught strategies for these skills. I then think maybe I just don’t remember and was taught these skills but never retained any of it.
I also can’t help but think the sooner you can introduce these skills and have students summarizing and note taking the better off they will be. I can’t help but think I could start with my children now at home when we read picture books together, I should be asking them frame questions and practice summarizing so they are prepared to use this skill in school. I know that since I have been out of the classroom for a while that I feel like these simple strategies are new to me unlike others who have been teaching for years.
I was the student who tried taking my notes verbatim and always knew that it wasn’t effective but lacked the strategies I needed to take effective notes. I love the idea of giving students teacher-prepared notes so that they have a model of what notes look like and what is important. I like what Robin was saying that she does with some of her students was give them prepared notes but blanking out words or terms or also giving them a word bank to fill in the blank. I know she said it depended on her students ability but I thought what a great way to introduce and reinforce this skill. I know that as with anything else students need to be taught the strategies and then have lots of practice so that they are able to use these skills effectively. I believe these are skills you can use in many areas of your life not just when you are a student.
Sara Malvar
Week Three: Summarizing and Note Taking
Week 3: Summarizing and Note Taking—Jennifer Flagel
This chapter was very helpful for me to better understand the importance of summarizing and some discrete ways to teach it. I have always known summarizing is an extremely important skill, though I’d have to say it’s been difficult to figure out how to teach it effectively. I’ve found that modeling the use of order words (First, Next, Last, etc.) really helps the students summarize narrative text. We also spend a lot of reading time focusing on story elements (setting, characters, problem/solution). Since we use DRAs to assess student comprehension, I haven’t really focused on leaving out important information and redundancy. I usually want them to tell me more about the story, not less. It seems like a tricky idea to have first graders generalize too much, as it’s hard to draw the line between a retell and a summary (I hope this makes sense!)
After reading this chapter, I feel like I have a more clear idea of specific and systematic ways to teach summarizing. I had bits and pieces of the summary frames in my curriculum, but not in such a comprehensive fashion. I also see how utilizing the summary frames lend themselves to effective and purposeful teacher modeling of summary paragraphs. Simply using the information from the completed frames automatically limits what will be written in the summary paragraph. Genius!
There are a few summary frames that I can see myself using in my classroom regularly: The Narrative Frame, The Definition Frame, and The Problem/Solution Frame. They fit well with our curriculum and would encourage thinking about stories at a deeper level. I am also particularly drawn to the concept of Reciprocal Teaching. It seems that it would take a fair amount of front-loading and continued guidance to get this going, but I think it would be well worth it! Creating opportunities for the students to teach and learn from each other is often when they are at their best. Not to mention it would also be a great assessment tool for me.
Jennifer Flagel—Assignment #3
Thanks Ashley, Marti, Sara, and Jennifer for your comments on summarizing and note taking.
Ashley – I hope that these strategies help to make your end of year research project more effective (and not so frustrating for all involved) next year. Keep in mind that kids will always perform better with choice, purpose and audience; I’m not sure how much leeway you have in the assignment.
Marti – I think the strategies you mentioned are very concrete strategies that should really be able to support you group of students and their needs. Your students are a little younger than Ashley’s. Have you ever read Stephanie Harvey’s book called Nonfiction Matters: Using Real Reading and Writing to Explore the World? I used her book for my inquiry or research units of study when I taught fourth grade. Here’s a link to some more information: http://www.readwritethink.org/professional-development/professional-library/nonfiction-inquiry-using-real-30463.html .
Sara – I constantly feel the same way…”how lucky these kids are that we work so hard to actually explicitly teach them these strategies rather than learn them by osmosis like I feel like I did” :) I think I’m giving my teachers a bad rap…maybe I just forget the learning. I think using the frames at home with your own kids is a great way for you to talk about their reading and would benefit all of you! Robin’s strategy is a great example of how we use the gradual release of responsibility, and provide scaffolds for student learning prior to slowly removing them.
Jennifer – That DRA sets kids up for retelling, NOT summarizing. I personally think that since we teach kids to be able to perform and do well on these reading assessments, when it’s time to make the switch to summarizing, it is actually very difficult because they’re so programmed to retell. Summarizing is higher level in that they actually need to do higher level thinking and be able to determine “most important information” and the “big ideas” or “themes” within a text. I think that the frames will provide you will more of the support you need to help you with this instruction in the future.
I would add a comment about the discussion that we're having. As a middle school learner, I loved having blank lines to fill in with key words or phrases because I didn't have the capability to keep up with the lecture by writing out longer thoughts. I also didn't have the skills to summarize on the spot, so the teacher made me feel competent when I could fill in those blanks. Looking back, I was happy the teacher spent enough time to really focus on what he wanted me to focus on, instead of just throwing me into the pool and letting me figure it out. I specifically remember this approach in my science and english classes. I'm really enjoying reading all of your techniques not included in the Marzano book.
Oops! I forgot to write my name and assignment number.
Amber Young
Classroom Instruction That Works, Assignment #3
Amber Young said...
This chapter helped me reflect on my past experiences and future strategies for my Masters with Concordia this fall. I was taught how to take notes in middle and high school science classes. They taught me the informal outline style, and that’s my style to this day in a lecture class or while reading a textbook because it’s easy to adapt as the lecture progresses. (I did have to learn to leave spaces between sections for the same lecture, though, in case we revisited something.) In undergrad, I despised having teacher-created notes and copies of power point slides with blank lines handed to me early in the semester. Why would I want to read a chapter AND their outlines, plus do my own notes? However, I did appreciate copies of their notes when it came to test time just to make sure I was on track. I also think teachers need to review their notes after every lecture and revise/revisit as necessary. It was amazing how tests wouldn’t match our discussions (either having tons of questions on things we barely covered, a few questions on things we spent lots of time on, and a few surprise obscure questions that were only found in the textbook) yet we were still magically responsible for the information, so teacher notes were a “peek” inside the professor’s mind. I also questioned verbatim notes being ineffective yet more notes equally better test results. In my experience, I need to process and summarize notes later. It’s not fair to expect students to digest new information and summarize in the same class period-it goes too fast. I take my hand-written notes home then type them up into a formal outline when I have the time to really process the information. By the time the final comes, I’ve gone over my notes at least three times. I appreciate the right to delete and replace terms, how lovely to be given permission! My music classroom does not involve lectures, so our summarizing is done as a class, mostly with story books/lyrics/plots and categorizing genres of music, so I would like to try out the Conversation and Definition Frames. It’s hard to give a short answer to this chapter-this is an entire book’s worth of discussion!
When the author says that two of the most useful academic skills students can have are summarizing and note taking, my first thoughts were of the need to be able to discern the important information from the non-important information while taking college classes for my undergraduate degree. I too cannot remember being formally taught these skills as an elementary student or even a high school student. The closest thing I can recall is the practice of outlining. When it comes to note taking, I think for the most part my fourth grade students struggle between listening to the information being presented and actually writing. I know that I always feared not hearing something because I was writing…let alone the process of synthesizing what it was I was listening to. The “Rule-Based” strategy made great sense to me. I know cognitively that this is the process we go through to summarize. It looks like I need to present this more formal process to my students using smaller paragraphs or passages and breaking down each sentence to decide what the important points are like the figure 3.2 shows with the photographic process.
I also believe that the skill of summarizing is critical to comprehension. I find that students rarely are able to synthesize the information they read into a summary. They are more likely to copy verbatim out of their book. In fourth grade, I expect my students to read each night for 20 minutes and then write 3-5 sentences about the most important key points of what they read. Frequently they have a difficult time deciding which are they key events. From the very first week, I model summarization with a classroom read aloud and at the end of each chapter we decide the important events that are key to the story and I have them assist me in creating a summary in my own words of what has happened. I agree whole heartedly that one of the keys is the awareness of the explicit structure of information. The authors affirm the teaching of paragraph and article structure being a key to students being able to select the important ideas from the text. When reading a book, I teach students to use the chapter titles as a key to creating a “topic sentence” to begin their summary. The only part of the “Rule-Based” strategy I have not used is the strategy of substituting of superordinate terms for lists. This is a strategy I am going to try to teach in the future.
The portion of the chapter I found most useful was the introduction of the Summary Frames. The narrative frame, the definition frame and the problem/solution frames seem the most applicable to my students and what they are learning. The two pieces I have been missing in the narrative frame are steps 3 and 4 that focus on the initiating event and the internal response. These seem like key concepts to the understanding of the story and how the main characters feel about the initiating event. I also understand the value of multiple solutions in the problem/solution frame is beneficial so students don’t allow themselves tunnel vision in deciding the solution to a problem allowing them to justify the best solution possible and to possibly think outside the box when presented with a problem.
Assignment #3 (8/9/11) – Classroom Instruction That Works
When the author says that two of the most useful academic skills students can have are summarizing and note taking, my first thoughts were of the need to be able to discern the important information from the non-important information while taking college classes for my undergraduate degree. I too cannot remember being formally taught these skills as an elementary student or even a high school student. The closest thing I can recall is the practice of outlining. When it comes to note taking, I think for the most part my fourth grade students struggle between listening to the information being presented and actually writing. I know that I always feared not hearing something because I was writing…let alone the process of synthesizing what it was I was listening to. The “Rule-Based” strategy made great sense to me. I know cognitively that this is the process we go through to summarize. It looks like I need to present this more formal process to my students using smaller paragraphs or passages and breaking down each sentence to decide what the important points are like the figure 3.2 shows with the photographic process.
I also believe that the skill of summarizing is critical to comprehension. I find that students rarely are able to synthesize the information they read into a summary. They are more likely to copy verbatim out of their book. In fourth grade, I expect my students to read each night for 20 minutes and then write 3-5 sentences about the most important key points of what they read. Frequently they have a difficult time deciding which are they key events. From the very first week, I model summarization with a classroom read aloud and at the end of each chapter we decide the important events that are key to the story and I have them assist me in creating a summary in my own words of what has happened. I agree whole heartedly that one of the keys is the awareness of the explicit structure of information. The authors affirm the teaching of paragraph and article structure being a key to students being able to select the important ideas from the text. When reading a book, I teach students to use the chapter titles as a key to creating a “topic sentence” to begin their summary. The only part of the “Rule-Based” strategy I have not used is the strategy of substituting of superordinate terms for lists. This is a strategy I am going to try to teach in the future.
The portion of the chapter I found most useful was the introduction of the Summary Frames. The narrative frame, the definition frame and the problem/solution frames seem the most applicable to my students and what they are learning. The two pieces I have been missing in the narrative frame are steps 3 and 4 that focus on the initiating event and the internal response. These seem like key concepts to the understanding of the story and how the main characters feel about the initiating event. I also understand the value of multiple solutions in the problem/solution frame is beneficial so students don’t allow themselves tunnel vision in deciding the solution to a problem allowing them to justify the best solution possible and to possibly think outside the box when presented with a problem.
Assignment #3 (8/9/11) – Classroom Instruction That Works
Thanks John – Isn’t it crazy how you can look back on your own learning and wonder how you got as far as you did with the instruction you received. I think that because it’s so hard for students to process information as you mentioned, it’s that much more important that we give them information in as many different ways as we can.
Thanks Amber! I totally agree with your point that it's too difficult for most to be able to summarize and especially being able to synthesize a lecturer's information on the spot..while meanwhile, the person has gone onto other thoughts. You were lucky to have had teachers who actually taught you how to notetake effectively. Reading your process confirms my belief that we all tweak the process to find what works for us..
What I realized reading this chapter is that not only should I summarize the lesson every day, I need to teach my students how I want them to summarize. I think in the past I haven’t felt the summarizations my students wrote were meaningful, so I stopped. What I should do is at the beginning of the year discuss some rules for a summary or give them frame questions to help them identify the important part of the lesson. Then eventually they will be able to translate and synthesize the information without help.
I also need to teach my students how to take notes. If the lesson is teacher directed I always have teacher prepared notes. I often run into the problem of students trying to write everything down and missing what I am saying and sometimes missing the point of the lesson. I think I need to work on wait time, have the students write down the important information and then discuss it.
The most important question out of this chapter is how do I get my students to use their notes? This probably frustrates me the most. What I have tried to do is institute a “try three then ask me” policy where they have to try to answer their question using three available resources before I will help them. Sometimes my students want me to do all the thinking for them instead of trying to answer their questions using their notes.
Overall, I think my strategy for next year, especially for my younger students, is to teach these study skills early in the year as a part of setting up the class. I might be behind some of my co-workers at the beginning of the year, but hopefully it will make my classroom run smoother for the rest of the year.
Lynn – you are so right in that we cannot just assume that our students have received the instruction or foundations in the past that they should have. I think that because so many teachers do make assumptions about prior instruction (or actual learning), many of our students have some pretty big gaps in their learning. I think it’s wonderful, that even at a higher level of instruction, you are able to reflect on this and take the time to teach what your students actually need. This is why assessment is so important. (I like the try three then ask me rule ).
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