Each summarizing workshop is about one hour. See below for details of each session.
Download PowerPoint and handouts here.
Session 1: Reading Strategies for Summarizing
In this workshop, participants will explore various approaches to reading which enhance students’ skills in summarizing. The workshop will focus on basic pre- during- and post-reading strategies that improve overall reading comprehension and enable students to identify the following: 1) organizational patterns, 2) main ideas and 3) the most important details in a text, all of which are invaluable for paraphrasing and constructing summaries. We will also look at the value of extended reading and student-selected texts in enhancing students’ global reading skills.
Session 2: Writing Strategies for Summarizing
In part two of this workshop series, teachers will look at approaches to writing in the English language classroom which promote the development of summarizing skills. We will discuss the currently popular process/genre model of teaching writing and how it applies to paraphrasing and summarizing. Teachers will discuss the value of modeling and scaffolding the skills of effective writing as a means of increasing a student’s overall independence as a learner and his fluency in constructing identity through academic writing. We will also look at the role digital writing plays in the writing classroom and how teachers can take advantage of their students’ already high level of electronic fluency.
Session 3: Building Summarizing Lessons and Tasks
In this final workshop, teachers will use the concepts explored in the previous two sessions to decide how best to put together tasks and lessons which will help improve students’ skills and promote their autonomy. The focus will be on task-based instruction combined with pair and group work to foster a community of learners in the classroom. This community, through the integration of skills, constructs its own meaning and relies on each other and themselves for their continued development and emergence as independent learners. We will look at such summarizing-specific aspects as selecting texts, building and sequencing tasks and developing scoring rubrics for assessment.