Summarizing Is a Skill: How Do I Teach It?

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Not one of my students had their assignment. It was a 50-word summary of an article. They looked at each other, looked at me, and said, “We don’t know how to summarize.” This is not the first time we have done this assignment—it’s the 3rd or 4th.

“Okay. That’s good to know,” I said, taking a deep breath as I mentally trashed my whole lesson plan and began constructing a new one from scratch. 

The thing is, I believed the students. I don’t think they were just trying to get out of an assignment. Their previous summaries had always seemed a little weak—a collection of topic sentences straight from the article. I excused it with the thought that at least they knew what the purpose of a topic sentence was. I’d also noticed that when we did “dictogloss” activities if students couldn’t write the exact words, they left spaces blank, even if I encouraged them to at least put the idea in their own words. 

New lesson plan: “Let’s list 10 important words from the article.” (It’s not like they’re unfamiliar with the article. We’d read it together in class. We’d summarized it paragraph by paragraph. Um, yeah, maybe a lot of those summaries were really close if not identical to the topic sentence. They’d done well on a reading quiz and a vocabulary quiz. Seriously--I wrote my post last week on all the ways I was practicing active reading strategies with this article!) 

I listed the 10 words they volunteered on the whiteboard. Together, we came up with a couple of sentences linking those words around the content of the article, and I put them on the board. I asked whether there was anything important in the article that we’d missed. They said, “No.” We reviewed the article for content that wasn’t included in the summary on the whiteboard, and concluded that it was all good details and elaboration, but not essential. I erased the whiteboard and asked the students to write a summary like that. 

The results were mixed. Some were still pulling together topic sentences from the article. They do seem to understand a sentence at a time. Maybe that’s how they did well on the reading quiz. They found the sentence referenced and answered the question. Maybe they are holding a sentence at a time on their mental work bench, but no more.

I’ve got 2 weeks left in my school year to address this. It’s kind of exciting to have a pedagogical mystery to solve! I have a hypothesis: These advanced EFL middle schoolers can’t summarize because they don’t hold more than a sentence at a time on their mental work bench. Here are some of the things I'm going to try: 

• Summarizing exercise from Larry Ferlazzo’s book The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox. There are several simple paragraphs, each with 3 choices for a good summary: one is a quote of one of the sentences. One is just wrong. And one is the gist of the whole paragraph. I’m trying this on Monday.
• Simplifying text. I’ve been adjusting texts from Newsela to a lexile within the class range of students scores on TOEFL. For the last text of the year, I’ll dial that down to focus on summarizing. ("5 Easy Ways to Teach Summarizing Skills" emphasizes starting with simple texts where comprehension is not an issue)
• A plan in reserve: Find 5 main ideas. Paraphrase. Add transition. (Stacia Levy. “Less Is More? How to Teach Summary Writing,” Busy Teacher)

That will be about all I have time for this year. But that introduction to “Less Is More” got me: “Teachers at times tend to believe that summary writing is easy, and students should be able to do it without being taught; teachers will sometimes make an assignment to “read and summarize the article,” for example, without much direction.” Guilty as charged. I’ll do some experiments at the end of this year, and start next year differently.

How about you? What are your great ideas for teaching students how to summarize?

Scaffolding Active Reading Strategies

Me: What was the article we read yesterday about?
Student: Free-something.
Me: Hmmm…right…I wonder how you DO pronounce it? We just sort of muddled through yesterday. I’ll do a quick YouTube search. [Play it.] Okay—now we know how to pronounce it: friluftsliv. What does the word mean?
Student: Outdoor living.
Me: Yes—what country does it come from? [Silence. Finally…]
Student: Sweden?
Me: Close—the one next door.
Student: Finland? 
Me: Close! The other side. [More silence.] The first letter is N.
Student: Nigeria?

This conversation took place the day following our first reading of “‘Friluftsliv’: How an idea of outdoor living could help us this pandemic winter” from the website Newsela (originally from National Geographic). I had chosen this article because the textbook topic was “happiness,” so I searched Newsela for a related article that (a) I could adjust to students’ reading level and (b) makes global connections (see my post "Becoming a Globally Competent Teacher"). 

I was really excited about the text itself, but I’ve been struggling a bit with getting advanced middle school EFL students to use active reading strategies that move past only asking meaning of vocabulary. I’ve been trying to use strategies from Larry Ferlazzo’s book The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox, and while some have been great (see here, here, and here), others haven't worked as well. My faulty implementation, I’m sure, and I’m not giving up. This week I may have hit on something of a breakthrough. 

For instance, I realized during the conversation above that I hadn’t even questioned and researched how to pronounce the Norwegian word in the title, though it only took a 30-second investment. Also, while it had occurred to me to make sure students connected the adjective Norwegian with the noun Norway (the way English forms adjectives from country names is in no way intuitive for a language learner!) and even to extend the lesson to additional countries and their adjectives (love the website TeachThis), it hadn’t occurred to me to question whether students could picture the location of those countries. (As a result, I searched and found this cool site where you can look at a world political map and click on any country to go immediately to a map of that country!)

Most significantly, I realized, I hadn’t provided scaffolding between the “I do” and “you do.” We had read the text once together for comprehension—defining words and summarizing paragraphs. We had gone over a list of reading strategies (from The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox). I had even modeled doing some of them myself. Then I'd asked students to annotate the text. 

That’s when I remembered a strategy from Teaching Argument by Jennifer Fletcher that I’d used with 11th and 12th graders earlier this year. I typed up the ways my brain was using a reading strategy to interact with the first section of text. I printed the list, sliced it up, and distributed the questions and comments to the students:

• Where is Norway? What is it like?
• The picture reminds me of Alaska where I visited my aunt--those big, snowy mountains are beautiful.
• How do you pronounce “friluftsliv”?
• How can you celebrate time outdoors no matter the weather? I mean, last Saturday and Sunday was great for celebrating time outdoors, but Monday wasn’t so nice.
• Why is it natural for Norwegians?
• This is current! We have all had our lives changed! I really miss getting together with people. I wonder if this article can help? 
• I know some people who do unsafe things, and some who are staying at home going crazy. 
• The Norwegian way of enjoying life outdoors no matter the weather could help people deal with Covid-19.
• Sounds like my relatives in Minnesota! They love the winter because they love outdoor winter sports like ice skating and skiing. 

Then I told the students, “I’m going to read the introduction, stopping at the end of each sentence. The person who has the question or comment related to that sentence should raise their hand and read their paper. These are the kinds of questions and comments I’ll be looking for you to come up with on your own for the next section.”

The next section I read aloud and asked students to write down their own 3 questions or responses and share them in a group. Then I sent them home with the assignment to come up with 3 more responses on the next section on their own, and we’d discuss them the next day. We had a better discussion the next day. Though one “what does it mean?” question still came up. I’ll take that as a sign that more uncovering rather than covering of meaning—whether it’s vocabulary, grammar, or reading strategies—still has to happen. And as long as we’re all still asking questions, it will.  

Independent Reading: Keeping Students Engaged and Accountable

Buried in a good book (Photo by Jerry Wang on Unsplash)

Friday morning I looked out over my room of 6th and 7th graders, heads bent over their independent reading books, brows furrowed in concentration, flipping pages at intervals…and it made me happy to see them all buried in their books. When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park. Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson. Ghost by Jason Reynolds. Auggie and Me by Patricia Palaccio. Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. Allies by Alan Gratz. My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin. Genius: The Con by Leopold Gout. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan.

Several people have been asking online recently how to keep students engaged and accountable with independent reading. I go really light on the accountability—that sort of kills the joy and undermines the part of “independent” where we’re aiming at a lifelong habit. And I certainly don’t write book reports on every book I finish—though I do love talking about them! Research shows that external motivation may increase performance in the moment, but actually leads to a decrease when the external pressure ceases. So here’s what I’ve been doing: 

(1) Tying it into the big picture: I always start by referring to a poster of reading reasons on the wall and remind students why it’s worth spending the time doing this. Not only is reading fun and relaxing, but also it expands knowledge, increases vocabulary, strengthens writing, nurtures empathy, and much, much more.

(2) Teaching something: Yesterday I reviewed genres and asked students to turn to their neighbor and tell them the genre they were reading. While we were doing this exercise, a student said he’d finished his book and needed a new one. I asked whether he’d like a recommendation in the same genre he’s been reading, or whether he’d like to try a new genre. He thought for a minute and asked if he could look at one of each—a book in his usual genre and one in a new genre. (Love using the words we’re learning!)

(3) Setting a reason for reading: Yesterday, I reminded them that reading expands our knowledge, so at the end of the period I was going to give them a couple of minutes to turn and talk to a neighbor about something they’d learned from their reading this morning. (Last week I reminded them that reading increases vocabulary, and even more if you’re reading like a writer for interesting, powerful words and phrases.  I gave them each a post-it note, and asked them to write down at least 1 powerful, interesting, or unknown word or phrase they came across in their reading. One student said at the end, “This book is like a dictionary with a plot!”)

(4) Tracking reading: I do this—not the kids. I just keep a notecard for each student, and at the beginning of each reading period, I make the rounds and quietly record the book and page number they’re on. I note the ones who aren’t making much progress and the ones who are burning through the books. Yesterday I had a conversation with a student who is reading considerably slower this term than last. I wanted to let her know it was fine to abandon the book if she was feeling bogged down. She told me there were a lot of words she didn’t know, so she wrote them down and looked them up when she got home, but she liked the book and wanted to keep reading it.

(5) Reading voraciously—middle grades books: I’ve been working hard on this since moving from high school to middle school a year ago. (See this blog and this blog to trace that journey.) I have to do this to know how to match-make for the students—what books to recommend to who (“There’s no such thing as a person who doesn’t like reading, just people who haven’t found the right book yet!”), and to be able to enthusiastically make those recommendations. Book love is caught as much as taught.  

(6) Reading while students read: Studies show that this is the biggest predictor of whether an independent reading program will succeed or fail. Life experience says if I tell the students reading is important and they should do it, but I grade papers during reading time, they’ll believe what I do over what I say. Yesterday I wasn't reading middle grades fiction--I happened to be reading Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History. But that's okay--I can model adult reading, too.

(7) Sharing reading: Students know that before the end of the term, they'll need to present 1 short book talk to the class about something they've read--like they did last term.

In the fall trimester we read for 10 minutes per class period. (See my reflection on that here.) For the spring trimester, for a variety of reasons, that wasn’t going to work, so I shifted all the time to Fridays: Independent reading Fridays. I told students I thought their reading stamina was up to it, and they’ve proven me right! We seldom read for the entire 40 minutes. We have beginning mini-lessons and closing turn-and-talks. Sometimes I’ve allowed students to use the beginning of the period to finish some class work that didn’t get finished the day before. Some students are reading less overall—but some are reading more. The scheduling is an experiment and a work in progress, and it will be interesting to debrief with students at the end of the term, but I’m definitely sold on the commitment to independent reading time.

The Value of Practicing Debate

Are dogs better than cats? (Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash)

We had a discussion time in other class with other topics, but it was the first time going the actual debate. Debate is a good place to share information and thought, and also a great experience to think from both pro and con side. You would have a wider view of the topic because we don’t know which side we are going to talk about…. It was a great experience to have a debate, and I would like to do another with a different topic. --student reflection after debate

I recently dusted off my debate know-how—accumulated during one crash course season of coaching a debate team 7 years ago (see these blog posts for how that came to be and took shape). The class was an advanced high school EFL class, and as I prepared I was mildly surprised to find quite a few resources for using debate for language learners. Without even doing the protracted research for a multi-step debate, Larry Ferlazzo (The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox) recommends it for all level language learners to teach sentence stems for expressing opinion, agreeing, and disagreeing just in everyday conversation. (He also suggests searching online for debate sentence frames or debate language examples.)

My students spent a week’s worth of focused work researching, writing, and talking in English without me doing anything but a daily mini-lesson. At the end, they lit up when I suggested we could take an extra day so they could swap sides and have a chance at a second debate so all the preparation they’d done for the side they hadn’t drawn wouldn’t go to waste.

Here’s what my process included:

• I modeled the whole process with a light-hearted topic. I chose "Dogs are better pets than cats." As a class we brainstormed a list of pros and a list cons. That night I wrote up the whose debate with 3 speakers and a rebuttal for each side. They read the parts the next day and critiqued the arguments. 
• I used the website ProCon.org to choose a topic that listed pros and cons. We jigsawed them, just to understand how you could actually have a list of credible pros AND cons—examining how  data, logic, and quotations from authorities were used.
• We did a quick, light-hearted team debate in one class period. I gave them a list and they chose “Happiness is more important than money.” They had to prepare both sides in 30 minutes and flip for a side to debate at the end of the period.

The class chose the topic for their serious debate. During the days they researched, we did mini-lessons on debate language, using support, or a speed debate for the first 5-10 minutes of each class. For the speed debates, the topics were "Basketball is better than volleyball" and "People are becoming too dependent on computers." Teams had 1 minute to brainstorm, then presented 2 arguments. After that, there was 1 minute to construct rebuttals.

I won't have the time to do another debate like the student at the beginning was asking for, but these responses motivate me to implement debate in all of my classes:

In the process of debate, I learned that knowing both sides is important to having a clear and consistent opinion. It takes time and energy to look at both sides of the claim; however, that process will support your opinion. I learned in order to build your opinion for debate, you first have to understand the other side.

I learned that the opinion with information is much harder to rebut. And sometimes there are very strong arguments which are hard to rebut.

Resources:

• Ferlazzo, Larry. "Strategy #32: Debate," The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox. (book)
• Kreiger, Daniel. "Teaching Debate to ESL Students: A Six-Class Unit" (free online resource)  
• ProCon.org (Amazing website)
• "Speed Debating in the ELA Classroom,"  Write On with Miss G (hat-tip for the idea from this educator's blog)