Two of the Most Useful Skills a Student Can Have

It's funny that summarizing and note-taking is this month's topic. I've recently been working with students on mini-lessons about summarizing. They were asked to read a short passage and summarize what they had read in a paragraph. When I was reading their "summaries" I was amazed at how little they knew about a proper summary! Most of my students just copied the passage substituting a few words here and there and maybe throwing in an original sentence or two. Not one of them knew how to write a proper summary!



When I was reading this month's chapter about summarizing and note-taking, it really struck me that "hey, a lot of students can't do either!" Thinking back to my own school days, I don't think I was ever explicitly taught how to take notes or write a proper summary. Sure we always had to write summaries in English class, but mine was never an "A".

Summarizing and note-taking are skills that will benefit someone in whatever they do. While reading, I was really struck by the idea of the "Summary Frames". This is such a unique idea, and I think it would work great for all students especially because there is a different frame for every type of text. The Frames specifically tell you what you are looking for and ask questions to guide you along the way. They also help students to delete trivial, or redundant material and create a topic sentence.

I feel that note-taking can be taught to an extent, however, it is something that the student needs to modify to his/her way of thinking and how best to visually do so. I really liked the idea of the split page notes- one side of page is the actual "notes" and the opposite side of the page is pictures, flow charts, graphs...etc.

I am going to attempt to explicitly teach students how to write a proper summary. It will be interesting to see their response to the Summary Frames.

Follow Up
Although I haven't gotten around to making effort/achievement charts for each student, I have been talking a lot more about how the two are so closely related. With one student in particular, I feel that he is really starting to understand that zero effort=very little achievement. After each test/quiz/graded assignment I make it a point to ask the student "How much did you study at home?", "How long have you known about this?" "Do you feel that you tried your hardest?"...and so on. This student is usually pretty honest with me and himself. I'm starting to see a little more effort on his part! Slow and steady I guess!