Category Archives: summarizing

Use a diagram to “see” the structure of the new SAT essay

Posted on November 14, 2016 | Leave a comment

When working with students learning how to write an essay for the new SAT exam, I draw diagrams of an essay pattern they can follow. The diagram acts as a prewriting organizer.  It shows students an overall perspective of what they must write.  Here is a diagram that is easy to follow yet leads to an effective SAT essay.

diagram-of-sat-essayThis diagram separates the persuasive techniques from the summary.  In the SAT workbooks, the best essay samples entwine the summary and the persuasive techniques, a more sophisticated pattern to follow.

What is important is to cover all three of the criteria which will be judged:  1) clearly showing that you understand what the essay prompt is all about (the summary), 2) recognizing and analyzing persuasive techniques, and 3) doing all this using excellent English (perfect  grammar, a variety of sentence patterns, advanced vocabulary and–most difficult of all–your own voice).

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Posted in clarity, essay introduction, grammar, hooks, Introductions, persuasive essay, practice writing skills, prewriting organizer, SAT, SAT essay, sentence structure, summarizing, writing tips

How to use vocabulary workbooks as the basis for writing lessons

Posted on September 27, 2016 | Leave a comment

Teachers and tutors, do you want to save time and get double or triple use from the same source?  Use your students’ vocabulary workbook to teach writing.

EPSON MFP imageMany of my  students use the Wordly Wise 3000 series (which I recommend).  It has 20 lessons per booklet, one booklet per grade, first through twelfth.  In each lesson is an annotated list of new vocabulary words plus exercises using the words.

Like other vocabulary building series, each lesson also has a reading selection in which each new vocabulary word is used.  These reading selections are followed by many questions asking the student to use one of the new vocabulary words in a complete sentence answer.

But other ways to use the vocabulary and reading selections augment their original purpose and make them valuable as writing tools.  Here are some I have used.

  • Summarizing.  I teach students to underline the most important or key words in each paragraph.  Next, I show how to analyze each paragraph and to write an identification in the margin next to the paragraph.  Those phrases might be “dodo bird’s appearance,” “raising $ for Statue of Liberty base,” or “Renaissance dates and definition.”  Then, using the underlines and margin information, I teach the student to write a summary of each paragraph in about one or two sentences.  When he is done, he has a good summary of the reading selection.
  • Paraphrasing.  Taking one sentence at a time, I ask students to rewrite the sentence, keeping the meaning but changing the sentence structure and, where possible, the vocabulary.
  • Writing RACE responses.  I write a question based on the article.  Then I ask the student to respond using the RACE format (Repeat the question, Answer the question, Cite part of the article used as evidence, and Elaborate on that evidence with more evidence).
  • Writing sentences using new vocabulary words.  So many times students can define a word but they cannot use it properly in a sentence. I ask them to write sentences using vocabulary words. This shows their weakness in understanding certain words and helps me to explain the words better to them.
  •  Writing paragraphs using new vocabulary words.  I ask students to write each new word in a coherent paragraph or two. Writing a paragraph takes more skill than writing independent sentences.  Not only does the student need to know how to use the word, but he needs to know its noun, adjective and verb forms and whether it is the best word in a given situation.  Forming a coherent whole takes imagination and hard work.
  • Writing narratives.  Put a person or animal into the nonfiction situation in the reading passage and write about it. What if you were a dodo bird encountering your first human being?  What if you were a Cherokee forced to say good-bye to your land in North Carolina and trek toward the unknown?  What if you were Leonardo’s apprentice, entrusted to carry the rolled up canvas of the Mona Lisa from Florence to France?

If you are teaching children to write, you know that coming up with a writing topic is tedious.  But by using the reading selections from the vocabulary workbooks, the subject matter is identified, the student has prior knowledge, and the vocabulary words are identified.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel.

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Posted in narrative writing, paraphrasing, practice writing skills, summarizing, vocabulary building

Strategies for highlighting a text when summarizing

Posted on September 6, 2015 | Leave a comment

Highlighting a reading selection can be helpful for a student learning to summarize. But many students are not taught what to highlight. May I suggest an approach?

  • First, make a photocopy of the selection so that the student can highlight freely. Even if a student owns a text, making a photocopy of a reading selection when the student is learning how to highlight allows the student to make mistakes without damaging the text.
example of a text to be summarized plus a summary of it

Click on the information above about Ancient Greece to enlarge it.

  • Next, have the student read the selection without marking it in any way. If you suspect he might not understand the selection, question him about it until you are sure he understands it.
  • Third, ask him to find the topic. The topic is a word or a phrase identifying what the reading selection is about. Many times the topic is the title or headline, or it can be found in the first paragraph of a nonfiction reading selection. For a fiction selection, the student might need to infer from the details what the topic is, but usually it is stated. The student should underline or highlight the topic and write the word topic near that word or phrase. Identifying the topic reminds the student what the reading selection is about.
  • Now the student should identify the main idea. The main idea is not the same as the topic. A topic is a word or phrase; a main idea is a statement. From Charlotte’s Web, an early chapter’s main idea might be “Wilbur is lonely so he searches for a friend.” Or from an article about insects, a main idea might be, “An insect’s body has three parts.” The main idea might be found in the introduction of a nonfiction reading selection. Or the student might need to infer the main idea from the facts given. The student should highlight it and mark “main idea” next to it. Identifying the main idea often offers the student a sentence to write to begin the summary.
  • Next, the student should divide the reading selection into sections. This is not the same thing as dividing a selection into paragraphs, but it might turn out that each section is an individual paragraph. However, some sections, or subtopics, extend over more than one paragraph. The paragraphs of Wilbur asking the rat to play would be one section and the paragraphs of Wilbur asking the goose to play would be another section. The student could bracket a section in the margins or encircle all the paragraphs of one section with a single circle. In the margin of each section the student should name it with a word or phrase, such as “rat” and “goose.”
  • If there are important details, they should be highlighted or underlined. For example, if the reading selection’s topic is “Ancient Greece,” and it’s main idea is “Greece gave many contributions to world culture,” then the student should highlight categories of contributions such as poetry, statues, buildings, amphitheaters, democracy, trade routes, wine and plays. If a particular example is outstanding, such as the Parthenon or The Iliad and The Odyssey, they should be highlighted also.
  • Whole sentences should not be highlighted, just important categories or details. Depending on how long the summary should be, most details can be skipped.
  • Sometimes it helps to use arrows from the main idea to the supporting information that will be in the summary. Have the student draw arrows on the photocopy, including the points that should be in the summary.
  • Now the student is ready to write the summary. Start with the main idea, paraphrasing the original if possible. Have the student write it on his paper. Next, add one or more sentences fleshing out this main idea, using the highlighted categories and important details. If the student has done the preparation work, the summary writing should take just a few minutes.

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Writing a summary—How to tell what’s important to include and what’s not

Posted on August 19, 2015 | Leave a comment

My sixth grade student looked at the 17 paragraphs of a news article, bewildered. Where should she begin to find the main idea in order to write a summary? Was every name important? Did her summary need a hook? How about a conclusion?

Writing a summary is a new skill to many middle schoolers. Compressing 700 words into 150 or even into a single sentence without adding any opinion or outside information is daunting. Here’s how I walk a student through the process, over and over, until she gets it.

  • First, I make sure the student has read and understood the selection to be summarized. I might ask a few general questions to see if she understands the gist of it. Little things which adults spot quickly, like the source of the information, or the significance of it, might never occur to a student. So before writing, the student needs to be aware of the who-what-when-where-and why of a nonfiction selection and which of those five W’s apply. I ask the student to identify the five W’s, verbally, and to form one or two sentences combining that information. I help her refine those sentences, and they usually become the first sentences of her summary.
  • Next we look at the reading selection’s introduction and write on the original, separating the introduction with margin lines or even drawing a large rectangle around that section. For a student new to summarizing, drawing on the “document” can help her to “see” the organization.  If the document can’t be written on, I photocopy it so the student feels free to mark it.
  • I ask the student if the introduction is a hook or is a true introduction. “There’s a difference?” she might ask. I explain that many times the hook attracts readers to keep reading, but it is not the gist of the idea in the selection. The hook can be like the pretty woman selling a car in a TV commercial. Is the commercial really about the woman or the car? The student rereads the introduction and decides if it is hook or important information. If it is hook, I ask her to X it out and we move on to the next section of the reading selection which usually is the true introduction.
  • Sometimes there are subheadings which tie information together. If so, we look at how subheadings are used. Can you organize your summary the same way, I ask, writing a sentence or two about each of the subheaded information? “You mean I don’t have to summarize each paragraph?” No, you don’t. If the paragraphs are details about the same information, figure out what the main idea is in each subheaded section. A summary needn’t summarize each sentence or each paragraph but rather each important idea. At this point the student often rereads the selection, drawing lines around sections which can be summarized as a lump. Then she summarizes each section.
  • We go back to the five W’s. Who? I ask the student if she has said  who is the source of the information she has read? “Well, the newspaper is.” But who is the newspaper quoting or getting its information from. “Oh.” She identifies the “who” (the organization issuing the report, the government agency, the scientist), and if she has not noted this in her summary, she backtracks to put it near the beginning. “What” is usually the main idea, so that should already be on paper. “When?” A general date (last week, during the summer, in November) and setting should be noted. “Where” might be important but it might not.
  • “Why” might not be on the student’s radar, but it needs to be. Why is the information in the reading selection important? The student should be able to find out why somewhere in the reading selection. Stating it is often a good way to end a summary.
  • How about names? Sometimes a name is important, but many times it can be left out in a summary, and a description of the kind of work the person does can be used instead. “Scientists at the ABC organization,” or “angry mothers in Toronto,” or “people studying Shakespeare’s plays” might be a better way to identify who is involved than actual names. However, if the selection concerns a well-known person, that person’s name should be used.
  • How about organizing the summary? Should it go in the same order as the original reading selection? If the original is a news story, then yes, since information in a news story is written in order of importance. For other nonfiction selections, the original structure is probably a good guide, but it needn’t be strictly followed. On the other hand, why not follow it unless it is incoherent?

When my student finished her summary, she glowed, knowing she had left out so much while stating the main ideas in eight sentences. Seventeen paragraphs reduced to eight sentences! Yet I know we will need to do this many more times before she feels confident enough to compress on her own. Like so many writing skills, summarizing takes practice.

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Posted in conclusions, essay introduction, summarizing

Written summaries show reading comprehension

Posted on July 29, 2015 | Leave a comment

If you want to improve a child’s reading comprehension, one of the best strategies is to ask the child to write a summary of what he has read.

A written summary can tell you, the parent or teacher, if the student understands what he has read. A written summary can also inform you about problems in the thinking of a student, such as an inability to identify main ideas, an inability to rank ideas, and an inability to sequence ideas meaningfully. If the writer has included subtleties in the writing, such as inferences and metaphors, a summary can tell you whether the student caught on or read right over them.

What should you be looking for in a student summary?

  • All the main ideas of the reading selection should be present in the summary. If an idea is missing, ask the child why he did not include it. Did he think it not important? Did it seem more like a detail than a main idea? Did it seem to be included in another idea?
  • On the other hand, some students find it hard to distinguish between a main idea and a detail. Everything is important to them. Long summaries can be evidence of a student who cannot separate main ideas from secondary ones. They need help with this skill.
  • If the reading selection ranked information, did the student recognize this, or did the student report on the information willy-nilly? Perhaps the student missed clues as to the importance of certain ideas compared to others. Perhaps the student was in a hurry and thought naming three ideas out of five was plenty. Most likely, the student will encounter the same problems again and use the same strategies unless you point out the faultiness of his thinking.
  • If sequencing is important in the original reading selection, the child must note this is his summary. There might be chronological sequencing or logical sequencing which makes sense only if it is summarized in the correct order.
  • When inference or figurative language plays a noticeable role in the original reading selection, the student should note this in his summary. He might say, “Although the writer did not come out and say this, he inferred that. . .” Or he might say, “It is important to note that Mercutio spoke in puns throughout Romeo and Juliet, bringing much humor to his scenes.”

Little children who cannot write yet can still provide oral summaries as a way to test their understanding of a reading selection.

The more you ask the student to offer summaries, the better he will become at creating them.

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Posted in summarizing