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 D to 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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10 comments:
D.
I always knew that summarizing helps synthesize the information you are reading. It also improves your writing skills because you are forced to put things in your own voice instead of simply copying the author’s words. Growing up I did lots of summary writing, but I don’t think I ever realized how effectively it helps one learn new information. I also don’t remember ever having much instruction on how to write a summary. I think often teachers assume their students are able to do both these skills, but there doesn’t seem to be enough time designated to teaching these skills.
After reading the chapter on summarizing and note taking I realized how important these skills are and how complex each of them is. I tend to think of summarizing and note taking as pretty basic skills, but when you think about all the intricacies of each, they really are quite complex. I thought it was really helpful to see the different summary frames and to think about how each of them could be modified to help my first graders learn new information.
I simply want to do more summarizing in my classroom. I would like to begin by modeling using the narrative summary frame with the class on a book in which we are all familiar. We will talk about why it is important to know character names, the setting, and the problem in the story. I would have visuals made for each element. After we practice as a whole group, I would like to bring this to my guided reading groups and use it to guide our discussions. When students are familiar with the format, I could have them begin doing some independent writing on a narrative summary frame.
Randy Ball
Chapter2
This chapter gave me many things to think about. I have used comparison in my teaching before, by having the students measure the cylinder and piston to find clearance, but now look differently at what that could have been used to spark my students thought process in engine make up and the ability to live. I am currently preparing for semester finals and have used some of these techniques to recall what we have done, such as comparison, and metaphors. I got more feedback as we discussed the reviews and hope to see a good result in the testing.
Molly,
I think you hit the nail on the head. Teachers expect students to know how to summarize, but rarely do teachers instruct the students how to do this. (Another area that teachers often expect kids to know how to do is organization. How to keep a desk, track assignments, use folders are skills that some kids know but many others do not.)
Incorporating more summarizing into your classroom will help your students with a variety of subjects. It is an important skill and staring in first grade and building upon it each year would be the most beneficial for students.
Summarizing is one of the most difficult skills that I have encountered thus far in my teaching. It is a task that is very high-level in its procedure and it requires a lot of reasoning to take a large text and skim it down to the critical aspects. This challenge comes to me every spring when I need to teach this skill in my literacy instruction. It is so hard to flip the switch from the focus of retelling that encourages students to recall as many rich details as possible, to summarizing which instead means they have to really narrow down their details. It is a lot to ask them to try to tackle both these skills in the same year.
When we begin our summary writing, I find myself really frustrated because students do not know how to say the same things in their own words. I also struggle with getting them to recognize the important details to include in their summary and not just put in the facts that they found new or interesting. It is hard to get second graders to sort through text and really pull out what is important.
In this chapter there were couple of points that really hit a nerve with me. First was the portion that spoke to effective summarizing. That summarizing is a process to follow – delete, substitute and keep when working with information. I loved the exercise example in the chapter that showed so plainly how to help scaffold this process.
The other point that stuck was the idea that students must analyze at a deep level to be effective at summarizing. This ties into the frustrations that I feel with getting my students to pick the critical information and not just what clicks with them. This chapter made me realize that I have to teach the skill of analyzing facts before I can get my students to be effective at summarizing.
This week I decided to teach some whole group mini-lessons on that skill. I used some non-fiction texts and made class charts that were divided into interesting facts and essential facts columns. I was hoping that this would still honor the students thinking about what they thought was a “neat” fact, but would show them what is essential when researching. It was a little rough at first, but after two lessons they were getting better at synthesizing the facts into the correct categories.
From here, I would like to try taking this new skill into narrative summary work. I think I will try this same approach with picture books. I think I will read portions of the story and then stop to have the students help me make lists of story events. Once we have made the list, we can use the delete, substitute, keep system and write the summary in this manner. I would also like to experiment with the narrative frame approach and see how they do when they read to answer those specific questions. My hope is that by approaching the learning with two different models, the class will be more effective at mastering this skill. I am looking forward to seeing how this new approach works with this challenging teaching task.
Hi Hope,
This is a challenging instructional task, especially at your level. BUT it is vital that students have the experience to deveolp this skill and the structure in place to support them, move them forward and create positive experiences that help them feel successful. Letting the students know why this is important (something we should do with everything that we teach them) should help motivate them.
As this skill is essential for so much of what students do in school it should be built upon every year so that the students have the process down and the skills necessary to effectively summarize and take notes.
I also found the examples in this chapter valuable in my own instruction.
Summarizing is a vital skill in both the classroom and life. We cannot take in every bit of information we read, so it is important to pull out the essential parts. Communicating what you have read or learned in a condensed way is much more of a challenge than it seems and many children (and adults!) struggle with this. I absolutely think that children should be taught how to summarize, starting at a young age.
I never knew how much there was to summarizing because I don’t believe I was ever taught how to effectively summarize. Having a framework to work off of would be immensely helpful. I’m sure that if I used the various frameworks as a student, summarizing would progressively become an easier task. My brain would learn how to process new information in a more organized fashion and it would become a natural life skill.
It is kind of challenging for me to bring summarizing and note taking to a Kindergarten level. I would love to hear how other teachers have effectively set the foundation for summarizing and note taking at the Kindergarten level. The area that I can see being the most age appropriate would be in story comprehension. Our literacy instruction includes comprehension elements that include characters, setting, and beginning/middle/end. We discuss these elements in reading groups, but they are still challenging for many students.
I think a starting place for me would be to do more whole group modeling for the children during read alouds. Since most of the stories I read are in Spanish, I often ask comprehension questions along the way. However, I think coming up with some kind of graphic organizer or visual chart with simplified guiding questions similar to the narrative framework could be a useful tool. After discussing as a group, they could draw pictures using and write words or sentences to show what they have learned. This would setup children for more complex summarizing in years to come.
Raquel,
I was going to suggest exactly what you had written. :D
In Kindergarten working on the retelling and comprehension strategies is exactly where I would start for summarizing. Learning how to pick out important from not important details is also a critical skill not only for reading comprehension but also for summarizing.
Like you, I don't believe I was ever taught how to summarize. (If you could see my text books from college you'd wonder what all the different colored highlighting was for. :D)
Creating a chart based on the narrative framework would be so helpful for your students! I would def. suggest you try this.
How has reading this information affirmed some of what you already knew about summarizing?
This chapter affirmed my belief that summarizing and note-taking are strategies that many students struggle to employ independently. Therefore, there is a great need for modeling and instruction in regards to these processes.
What is something you now understand better about summarizing?
I’m not sure that I was ever explicitly taught how to summarize or take notes, but somehow I developed a system that worked for me. I tend to write a lot when I take notes, which apparently is proven to be the most effective way to take notes. Initially, I found there to be a bit of a contradiction in the text in that verbatim notes are ineffective, but lots of notes are the most effective. After thinking more about this, I developed a better understanding and arrived at a conclusion that I think this is an important point that needs to be clarified for students; write lots, but synthesize the information and put it in your own words (the difference between verbatim notes and writing lots of notes). The power is in the synthesis! The reading also helped me to see summarizing and note-taking as more than just study skills, which is how many students and teachers tend to view these strategies. (A side note: Parsimonious- especially frugal; cheap; stingy. A new word from chapter 3!)
How might you change how you use summarizing in your classroom?
The text emphasized the importance of exposing students to a variety of summarizing note-taking structures/procedures in an attempt to make sure that all students’ individual learning styles were attended to. I’ve seen teachers that seem deeply devoted to a specific format (Cornell Notes, for example) become frustrated when their students just don’t seem to “get it”. I don’t think it’s that the students are incapable of taking notes or summarizing, it could just be that they need to see it done in a different way in order for it to make sense. Moving forth, I will remind myself of the importance of presenting students with a variety of structures and formats. I also think I will make good use of the summary frames as presented in the text. Time and again, I see students struggle to read and/or comprehend a passage simply because they are approaching it with limited knowledge of how various forms of writing are structured. I think that explicit instruction of text structure, followed with explicit modeling of how to apply summary frames, will go a long way with helping some of my struggling readers access written information and unlock it’s meaning.
• How has reading this information affirmed some of what you already knew about summarizing?
From my own expericnces in high school and then throughout college I knew, for myself, summarizing and note taking was an effective tool that helped me learn. So it was not a huge surprise to see it in Marzano’s, Classroom Instruction that Works. Since I knew it was effective for me, I have always used the strategies of summarizing and note taking when instructing older students, but not as frequently in my instruction of younger students – 5th graders. Over the last four years I have taught fifth grade I have used the strategy of note taking on a minor scale – always mentally thinking it was a strategy used with older students, maybe because this was my personal experience. Also, I rarely used summarization as a strategy, especially so specifically as presented in chapter 3 of Marzano. Summarizing is a very difficult thing for students to do, especially elementary students. So I think I avoided using the strategy because I had the false notion that they were not developmentally ready to do summarizing effectively. Maybe they aren’t as likely to be successful at summarizing, and along with note taking, independently, so one would have to use the strategy in a way that aligns more closely with the developmental level and skill level of our students.
• What is something you now understand better about summarizing?
What I understand better now after studying Marzano is that this strategy can be used as a teacher-led instructional tool. Before I believed that students must be able to summarize on their own in order to make this strategy work effectively. This is false. How are they ever suppose to be able to summarize effectively if it has not been modeled for them countless times before.
Also, through Marzano I discovered a variety of summarization frames that would help students in the upper elementary learn to be able to summarize within more independent means. Telling someone to “summarize” can be a very abstract, scary venture if you don’t have a great deal of experience with it. So, these summarizing frames offered by Marzano in chapter 3 give students a concrete method to organize their thinking, leading them to a summarization.
• How might you change how you use summarizing in your classroom?
After reading Marzano’s chapter on summarizing and note taking, and studying the cornell notes, I decided a couple of weeks ago to develop a cornell note like note taking frame to use in my classroom. I really got excited how these notes combines note taking and summarization all in the same instructional tool. In addition, at the beginning of the note-taking tool I created I put a section titled “objectives” using another one of Marzano’s effective teaching strategies imbedded in the note-taking device. I felt these were very effective and many of my student really enjoy using them. The only issue, and I don’t really see it as an issue; I’m using them solely in a modeling, teacher led condition.
Hello Sarah and Brad,
YES! Students do need a lot of modeling and instruction around summarizing and note-taking. We think many (most???) teachers also don’t utilize these strategies to their full extent. They are very useful beyond basic study skills. We agree with your conclusion that writing a lot mean synthesizing the information. Glad you were able to add a new word to your repertoire. :D
I’ve had a similar conversation with my department head at the high school I worked at last year. First of all, neither of us was really ever taught how to summarize or take notes (and if we were, obviously it didn’t stick with us.) Second of all, we also discussed as beneficial as The Cornell Note taking method is, it isn’t for everyone. What we need to do as educators is to introduce the students to a variety of sound methods and let them use the system that works best for them. (We also discussed how the note taking index cards and outline format required for reports never worked for either of us when we were younger. Both of us created them AFTER the paper was done just in order to hand it in for the credit. Doesn’t sound like a real good use of student time, does it?)
We also found the summary frames a useful addition to our instructional arsenal.
Brad, incorporating summarizing and note-taking into your instruction with your elementary students will be so helpful for them and junior high teachers. As you said, the lessons need to be developmentally appropriate for the level the students are at, but I feel even with first graders, we can start to build on these skills with careful thought and planning.
I don’t think it’s an issue either. Have you thought about sharing the frame you developed with your teammates or upper grade teachers? It might be helpful for the students to have a standard frame to branch out from that they’ve used before.
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