Summarizing and Notetaking

Summarizing and Note Taking - One of Marzano's 

9 High Yield Strategies

Summarizing

Background

Summarizing teaches students how to take a large selection of text and reduce it to the main points for more concise understanding. Upon reading a passage, summarizing helps students learn to determine essential ideas and consolidate important details that support them. It is a technique that enables students to focus on key words and phrases of an assigned text that are worth noting and remembering.

Benefits

Summarizing builds comprehension by helping to reduce confusion. Teachers train students to process the information they read with the goal of breaking down content into succinct pieces. This strategy can be used with the whole class, small groups, or as an individual assignment. Summarizing text by using writing activities builds on prior knowledge, helps improve writing, and strengthens vocabulary skills.

Create and use the strategy

Pre-select and introduce the text to be used in the Summarizing technique. Decide whether to have students use this strategy within one section, on one page, or with the entire book. Then, model the process of sifting out extra verbiage and extraneous examples within the passage. Give your students ample time and opportunities to practice.

1. Begin by reading OR have students listen to the text selection.
2. Ask students to write a summary of the target text based on the following framework questions:
1. What are the main ideas?
2. What are the crucial details necessary for supporting the ideas?
3. What information is irrelevant or unnecessary?
3. Guide students throughout the summary writing process. Have them use key words or phrases to identify the main points from the text.
4. Encourage students to write successively shorter summaries, constantly refining their written piece until only the most essential and relevant information remains.

References

Jones, R. (2007). Strategies for Reading Comprehension: Summarizing. Retrieved 2008, January 29, from http://www.readingquest.org/strat/summarize.html.

Guthrie, J. T. (2003). Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction: Practices of Teaching Reading for Understanding. In C. Snow & A. Sweet (Eds.), Reading for Understanding: Implications of RAND Report for Education (pp. 115-140). New York: Guilford.

***Retrieved from - http://www.adlit.org/strategies/21827/***

Note Taking

Background

Structured Notetaking is a strategy that helps students become more effective note takers. Using graphic organizers specific to a particular text, structured notes assist students in understanding the content of their reading.

Initially teachers create the graphic organizers, but as students become more comfortable with using structured notes they are able to construct their own, matching the structure of their graphic organizer to the structure of the texts they read.

Benefits

Structured notes are really helpful when students are faced with interpreting complex text structures. The notes give students a reading guide to use as they navigate through difficult text, and act as a model of how students should organize their ideas as they are reading.

Create and use the strategy

1. Review the text and create a graphic organizer that matches the structure of the text. Provide each student with a copy of the organizer and the text they will read.
2. Review the structure of the organizer and how it relates to the structure of the text your students will read.
3. As students read and complete the organizer, remind them to review their responses and reflect on the connections being made between concepts.
4. Have students discuss their responses as a whole group or within their small groups. Remind students to focus their discussion on any questions where student answers differed.
5. At the completion of the reading, discuss how you created the graphic organizer and why you chose a particular structure for it. You may want to help students understand some of the common ways that information is organized (Buehl, 2000).
1. Cause/effect
2. Propostion/support
3. Goal/action/outcome
4. Compare/contrast
5. Problem/solution
6. Concept/definition

References

Buehl, D. (2000). Classroom Strategies for interactive Learning (2nd Ed.) Newark, DE: IRA

Smith, P., & Tompkins, G. (1988). "Structured Notetaking: A new strategy for content area teachers." Journal of Reading, 32, 46-53.

***Retrieved from - http://www.adlit.org/strategies/19779/***