This chapter really struck me. As a younger student I really struggled with summarizing, it's a skill that I continue to struggle with now as a teacher. When trying to explain summarizing to students I really struggle with getting them to take a step back from all the details and focus on the frame. I think the idea of summarizing frames would be really helpful in teaching our students to summarize. One thing I've tried is to write out the frames and/or their questions for my first graders. When reading our story for the week or a read aloud to my class, I reference the appropriate story frame. This has helped both me and my students to orally summarize.
Summarizing develops into the later skill of taking notes. While I have tried both forms of note taking mentioned in the text, I agree with Ashley in that people need to develop their own methods to best help themselves learn the material. This awareness of what works for yourself and your learning style takes a long time to develop. I wonder, if we as teachers encourage students to become more aware of their learning style that they will develop better note taking and summarizing skills earlier.
I was wondering the same thing as I read the text about if we explicitly show the kids how each of them learn differently and can thus take notes differently too. I think it is hard for them to know at our grade level how they learn best and it is our job to figure that out and then teach them about their learning styles. I mentioned in my post that I think we do tend to teach them one to two ways of taking notes and do not really explore a variety of ways to do so.
ReplyDeleteI applaud your effort at teaching such a difficult task to such young students. It is never to early for students to be exposed to skills that will help them achieve success. It is true that the summarizing skills help with note taking skills later on. Having young students exposed to these higher-order thinking skills is so important. It opens many opportunities for learning and retaining important information and provides the skills necessary for success later on in life.
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