Chapter 6 Summarizing and Note Taking

In order to summarize students have to decide which information is most important. My students have a particularly hard time with this. For example when summarizing an article they'll just repeat the whole article. Or they'll focus on some tiny trivial aspect of the article and consider that a summary. I do realize that evaluating what to include in a summary and what to keep out is a skill that's hard to learn.

I like what the science teacher in the book does - uses the Track Changes feature and a projector to model summarizing for the class. The auto summarize function in the word processing is helpful as well. I could see myself giving an article to my students and asking them to highlight what they consider that most important elements. Then using the projector again we could see what the auto summarize highlighted.

I also liked the Definition Frame Template from Inspiration as a note taking guide. The teacher in the chapter uses this with his class and then has the students compare and discuss their answers in pairs. That is a great idea. That way the students get to collaborate and get immediate feedback. They also might get a little different perspective on the article too.