Writing to Learn in all content areas GIST - SUMMARIES Writing to Learn in all content areas

Summaries Require Paying Attention politicalmonkey2010.wordpress.com Students must pay attention to what they read (or hear) in order to write an effective summary.

Accuracy is Essential bgwhitworth.wordpress.com If students don’t accurately understand the information, the summary will be flawed. This allows the teacher to see at a glance if there is a misunderstanding.

Most Summaries Fall into Two Categories Too Much Information Students list every piece of information they read in the text. Too Little Information Students write one sentence to summarize an entire chapter of a text. Explain that either type of summary misses the point. The intent of a summary is to present the most important information, and leave out the excess. The first category isn’t summarizing, it’s paraphrasing. The second category leaves out too much information to give a good understanding of the text.

What is GIST? A Type of Summary Students work together Students discuss each portion of text Students summarize progressively larger portions of texts into 25-word statements Give a basic summary of the GIST process. GIST stands for “Generating Interactions between Schemata and Texts.”

GIST Summaries Require Critical Thinking Students continually revise their summaries to incorporate new information: deleting less important information, and adding new ideas. Students can’t just take what they’ve already written and add to it; they must evaluate all the information and decide what is most important. This requires all of the critical thinking skills.

Research Base Summarization: One of the most effective strategies to improve student writing (effect size 0.82) and reading In a meta-analysis of writing studies, summarization was one of the two most effective strategies for improving student writing.

GIST - Summary Form groups of 4. Distribute a copy of a text (“Dementia Risk Seen in Players in N.F.L. Study” for today) to each group. In groups, read the 1st paragraph, and summarize it in 25 words or fewer. Read the 2nd paragraph, and revise the first summary to create a 25-word summary of the first TWO paragraphs. Read the 3rd paragraph, and revise the summary to create a 25-word summary of the first THREE paragraphs. Continue in this manner until you have a 25-word summary of the entire article. Let participants know that they are free to highlight, mark up, underline, etc… By the time they have finished, they have been “forced” to make decisions about what is really important in the article.

General Procedure Choose a text for students to read Group students in groups of 3-5 Give students 2-4 minutes for each summary; may need more time for later summaries or if text is longer (a chapter, for example) Give small groups time to discuss their summaries Move to whole class discussion if desired – compare summaries

GIST - Texts Chapters of textbooks Novels Experimental observations News/magazine articles Websites/documents Historical documents Video (stop every 5 minutes) Lecture (teacher will need to structure presentation to fit the strategy) Emphasize that this can be used with virtually anything a teacher would have his/her students read. When used with lectures or videos, it is an excellent strategy for the new Core listening strand. Also, no matter what text is used, this encourages students to discuss with one another, again, implementing the speaking and listening strand.

Flexibility GIST can be used Before a class discussion To introduce a topic To help students read more critically During/After a class discussion To present another viewpoint on a topic

Can be used to summarize reading:

Can be used to summarize a video:

Can be used to summarize the observations for a lab:

Variations Have students summarize a documentary, stopping every 5-7 minutes to revise their summaries. One-sentence summary for each paragraph, with no revisions. “Twitter” summaries – 140 characters each Upgrade to 140 words Possibility – instead of revising the summary each time, just add a sentence to it. Twitter summary allows students only 140 characters to summarize a paragraph, chapter, or portion of text. Once they have this, give them 140 words, and see what they add in. (Providing students with graph paper works well for “Twitter” summaries.)

What Can Go Wrong? Unbalanced groups – One person does the work. Option 1: Rotate who writes the summary for the group after each rotation. Option 2: Have each person in group write his/her summary before choosing one for the group.

Assessment Give participation points Have groups share their final summaries to assess understanding (don’t worry about grammar, spelling, etc.)

Assessment Use as a formative assessment What do students understand? Where is there a disconnect? What do I need to clarify?

Your turn Create a list of four specific situations in which the GIST strategy would work in your classroom. Choose at least one from your first month’s curriculum. Share with neighbors/group.