Transcript Sum It Up - Instructional Resources for Reading Teachers

Sum It Up
Presented By :
Gwendolyn Brooks’ Literacy Team
Sum It Up
• Summarizing is a comprehension skill
we taught students during reciprocal
teaching, and they rely on this skill as
they learn to write effective
summaries from what they have read.
Sum It Up
• Students must have a good
understanding of what the main idea
is to write a logical summary.
From RETELLing to
SUMMARIZING
• As elementary
students our
children were
taught to “retell”
as a comprehension
skill.
• They retold
EVERYTHING they
remembered about
a piece.
• Retelling is long
and full of details
Good Summaries:
• Are a concise amount of main idea
facts.
• Are opinion free
• Should be somewhat short
• Should keep the same tone as the
original text.
Sum It UP
• VIPs in Action
• Very Important Points is a tactile
way to go about pulling out the main
ideas.
• Forces the students to evaluate what
information is important in what they
are reading.
Sum It Up
• What Is Summarizing?
Summarizing is how we take larger
selections of text and reduce them to
their bare essentials: the gist, the key
ideas, the main points that are worth
noting and remembering. Webster's calls a
summary the "general idea in brief form";
it's the distillation, condensation, or
reduction of a larger work into its primary
notions.
When You Ask Your Students to
Summarize, What Usually Happens?
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•
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they write down everything
they write down next to nothing
they give me complete sentences
they write way too much
they don't write enough
they copy word for word
What Did You Want Them To
Do?
•
•
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•
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pull out main ideas
focus on key details
use key words and phrases
break down the larger ideas
write only enough to convey the gist
take succinct but complete notes
VIPs in Action
• During this exercise the instructor is
modeling and thinking aloud as he/she
reads to find the (6) main ideas of a
piece.
• He/she will use sticky notes to mark where
the main idea is in the text.
• The position of the sticky notes may
change during the exercise.
VIPs in Action
• Take the time to demonstrate
changing your mind.
• This is much easier than permanently
highlighting.
VIPs in Action
• Proficient readers track down the
important information and evaluate
its importance.
VIPs in Action
• After highlighting six main ideas,
challenge the class to narrow it down
to only three main ideas.
VIPs in Action
• Can be executed in small groups and
in independent practice.
VIPs in Action
• Time to prepare for the writing.
• We can strengthen their writing by
providing a formula for their topic
sentence.
Sum It Up
• A+B+C
• A= Title & Author
• B= Strong Verb
• C= Main Idea
Sum It Up
• Write down 4-5 main ideas from what
you read that support the main idea
in your topic sentence.
Sum It Up
• Turn each fact from the box above
into a sentence . Use transition words
to help improve sentence fluency.
• No closing sentence is necessary .
Sum It Up
• ACTIVITY TIME