to include in a summary.
Clarify the difference between objective and subjective by giving examples of each about a different but similar text before they attempt to write an objective summary of other texts.
Allow students to study models of effective summaries.
Provide sentence stems typical of those used to summarize this type of text (In______, Author X argues that _______).
To have students trace the text’s explanation or depiction of a complex process, do the following:
Request that students use a structured note-taking format—outline, storyboard, or some visual explanation using shapes and arrows—to capture and illustrate whatever complex process they are reading about; to these more visual notes, they should add captions or other written notes to describe what is happening, why, and what it means or how it relates to the larger subject of the text.
Code the text with colors or labels in the margin as students read to indicate the different stages, making special note of what causes the process to begin or change throughout.
Demonstrate how you trace such development of ideas over time.
To have students analyze central themes interacting and building on one another, do the following:
Ask how one set of images, allusions, or ideas builds on or is otherwise related to those that come before it.
Have students use a graphic organizer (e.g., one with two or more columns) to jot down the details related to each key theme, looking for patterns across the columns as they go.
To have students paraphrase complex information by paraphrasing them, do the following:
Model and explain for students the difference between a summary, a paraphrase, a abstract, and a précis.
To help your English Language Learners, try this:
Make a point of checking that they know and can apply the related concepts—themes, analyze, summarize, and supporting details.
Preparing to Teach: Connections to My State’s Standards
Common Core Reading Standard 2: Academic Vocabulary: Key Words and Phrases
Accurate summary: Identifies the key ideas, details, or events in the text and reports them with an emphasis on who did what to whom and when; in other words, the emphasis is on retelling what happened or what the text says with utmost fidelity to the text itself, thus requiring students to check what they say against what the text says happened.
Analyze: This refers to the careful and close examination of the parts or elements from which something is made and how those parts affect or function within the whole to create meaning.
Build on one another: Specifically refers to the notion of how different ideas build on one another within the text in general and over time in particular. This might mean how an idea or a theme, such as the resiliency of the human spirit, is explored through different examples or stories, all of which complement and build on one another as a way of developing that idea over the course of the text.
Complex account: Literary texts often weave several major ideas throughout any given text; when authors cause ideas to interact with one another, it often creates a sense of “things were not as [simple] as they appeared to be” when students scrutinize the text. Everything will seem connected in some complex way.
Complex analysis: Informational texts examine ideas within arguments and explanations of these complex concepts or processes.
Determine central ideas: Some ideas are more important to a work than are others; these are the ideas you could not cut out without fundamentally changing the meaning or quality of the text. Think of the central ideas of a text as you would the beams in a building: They are the main elements that make up the text and that all the supporting details help develop.
Development: Think of a grain of rice added to others one at a time to form a pile; this is how writers develop their ideas—by adding imagery, details, examples, and other information over the course of the text. Thus, when people analyze the development of an idea or theme, for example, they look at how the author does this and what effect such development has on the meaning of the text.
Emerges: This refers to the process of an idea unfolding, slowly coming to the fore as the author develops the idea over time.
Key supporting details and ideas: Important details and ideas support the larger ideas the text develops over time. These details and ideas appear as examples, quotations, or other information used to advance the author’s claim(s). Not all details and ideas are equally important, however; so students must learn to identify those that matter the most in the context of the text.
Objective summary: This describes key ideas, details, or events in the text and reports them without adding any commentary or outside description; it is similar to an evening recap of the news that attempts to answer the essential reporter’s questions—who, what, where, when, why, and how—without commentary.
Paraphrasing: While a summary is much shorter than the text it describes, a paraphrase is nearly as long since it is a form of translating a text into a more accessible language. It is best to paraphrase only short passages, for example, a complex theory or findings from a study to make it accessible to others with less knowledge about this subject or field.
Themes: The ideas the text explains, develops, and explores; there can be more than one, but themes are what the text is actually about.
Trace the text’s explanation or depiction: To “trace” is to follow something you can already see: Readers follow the stages in a process, noting how it unfolds or relates to the author’s argument.
Notes
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Planning to Teach: What to Do—and How
Reading Standards: Key Ideas and Details
Reading 3:
