1. Writing Committee August 6, 2012 St. Mary Church Hamburg, PA
SUMMARY WRITING
Writing Committee
August 6, 2012
St. Mary Church
Hamburg, PA

2. WHAT IS A SUMMARY
“Summarizing is the process of distilling information down to its most salient points to aid in understanding, memorizing, and learning the relevant material.”
Classroom Instruction that Works, 2nd Ed.
p. 78

3. “A summary is a long text distilled to its essentials, the key points worth noting, without examples and details. The specific form, the sentence structure and the vocabulary, has been changed, but the main ideas remain.”

4. Summary Writing Difficult academic skill Need to be explicitly taught
SUMMARIZING IMPROVES:
reading skills
vocabulary skills
writing and editing skills
cooperative learning skills

5. What can we do?
Set our students up for success.
Be flexible.

6. Steps to Teaching Summary http://busyteacher
As a class, read a short selection.
Have students underline the main ideas as they read.
Once students have their texts marked up, open the discussion of summaries.

7. Steps to Teaching Summary Cont. busyteacher.org
4. Provide an example.
5. Discuss the ideas.
6. Focus on 5 main ideas.

8. Steps to Teaching Summary Cont.
7. Work on ordering the sentences and connecting them with transition words.
8. Paraphrase the sentences.
9. Teach the language of summaries.
10. Finalize.
Have students practice in pairs

9. HOW TO WRITE A SUMMARY Source:

10. eNotes – Write a Summary
Divide and conquer.
Read.
Reread.
One sentence at a time.
Write a thesis statement.
Ready to write.
Check for accuracy.
Revise.

11. Classroom Instruction that Works
CLASSROOM PRACTICE FOR SUMMARIZING:
Teach the rule-based summarizing strategy
Use summary frames
Engage students in reciprocal teaching

12. Rule-Based Summarizing Strategy
Source: CITW, 2nd Ed.
Take out material that is not important to understanding.
Take out words that repeat information.
Replace a list of things with one word that describes them.
Find a topic sentence or create one if it is missing.

13. Use Summary Frames
Chapter 3

14. Summary Frames
“a series of questions designed to highlight the critical elements of specific text pattern.”
Enables the student to focus on a variety of text genres.

15. Six Basic Summary Frames
narrative
topic-restriction-illustration
definition
argumentation
problem-solution
conversation