Assignment #3: Complete the 4 part assignment format as you read, reflect, and respond to Chapter 3 – Summarizing and Notetaking
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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 Dto the blog. We’re 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, reflect on how you would use this strategy in your classroom.)
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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4 comments:
Assignment # 3 Summarizing and note taking
As I was reading this chapter I was thinking of how useful it would have been for me as a student to have learned these two strategies: summarizing and note taking. I would have appreciated very much if my teachers would have spent some time teaching explicitly how to summarize and take notes. I have to admit that when I was a student I did not want to miss or omit any information the teacher provided because I was afraid that I was not an “efficient” leaner if I did not write it. I also believed that everything was important without realizing that I was overusing my working memory and not analyzing the content of the lessons. I thought that if I provided more details I was showing evidence of a better learning process.
However, I did know that when you summarize you delete information that is not key to the theme but you keep the information that is crucial to the content. I did not realize the importance of substituting in summarizing. I now have a better understanding of the rule-based strategies for summarizing; I also found the diverse examples provided in the chapter very illustrating and well explained. I feel I have a clearer picture of the way they should be presented to the students in class.
In my classroom we summarize in reading and science class. When reading a story or learning about an insect we write reports by including the relevant information read. I am going to introduce other summarizing frames my students have not used before. I want to model several times the reciprocal teaching since I find it very innovative.
In first grade we do not use note taking very much. My students are learning to write in their native language, they are still grasping the concepts and applying them. However; I am going to be more aware of modeling note taking to my students to help them analyze the critical aspects of a passage. I will also be more explicit about being more analytical about the content that is being taught so my students can discern what is important in a particular topic. I want to expose my students to the combining notes method so they can see the diverse ways they can organize information such as outlining the main points or using graphic organizers to have a visual image of their thinking.
Liliana, I totally agree with you that I wished my teachers had specifically taught summarizing and note taking. Your description of how you plan to take this information and mold it to fit your grade level and students is excellent. This skill is not one that you expose students to once and then expect them to have mastered the concept. It is cyclical and needs to be revisited through out the year and each year with a strong foundation built in the early grades.
As I was reading the chapter on summarizing I realized how often these skills are overlooked when they are taught. The story toward the beginning of the chapter was talking about a teacher giving an assignment almost assuming that the students knew what to do and once the assignment was turned in they had no idea. Currently in my class I am trying to teach my students the different between summarizing and retelling a story. I keep emphasizing that I do not need all the little details but only the most important information and analyzing what is important and what is not. This is a skill that is very important but unless you are taught how to choose important information from unimportant then it makes this task very difficult.
This reading affirmed that I need to spend more time on making sure my students know how to summarize something. Lately we have been focusing on summarizing stories we’ve read and I believe through using some of these strategies I can make that type of learning more affective. I knew that being able to summarize was important but I now again realize how important it is to reinforce each step to a summary. The various examples would help a student more fully understand the information or story because of the questions that broaden understanding.
We are beginning to read Charlotte’s Web this week and I want to introduce the narrative frame to help students write a summary after every 5 chapters. This helps them pull the correct information out of the text to create an effective summary. I know that allowing the students to answer the questions to help frame what has happened will help them greatly. Usually I have them pull out the 8 most significant events in the story and with short stories that is a little simpler but with a novel I’m hoping that this type of summary will help to create a depth in their summaries to better grasp the theme throughout the story.
Charlotte's Web is a great book to use to introduce the story frames to your students. The time you spend on helping your students identify significant facts and summarizing is well worth your effort! As you said, more teachers need to be slowing down, introducing the concept and helping the students develop a mastery of summarizing.
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