Synthesizing Synthesis Studies

 

Making a home for one's thinking.  I love this.  And I love that we get to be a part of helping our students expand their thinking and grow their relationship with authors.  In the cocoon of the apprenticeships we create for and with our students, each child learns the she must and can understand as reader and be understood as writer.  

In the partnership of reading between author and reader, thinkers synthesize.  As readers, we interpret and integrate an author's words to innovate our own version of the text. We bring and also wonderfully expand our lens.  By synthesizing what we read, hear, view, or do, we gain a new brain.

Knowing how important growing students' synthesis thinking focuses our work but it does not make our work easy.  This is heady stuff (Pun intended!). 
The hardest parts of teaching students to synthesize are knowing what synthesis means and knowing what to look for in students' work to evaluate and support their growth as integrative thinkers.  What does proficient synthesizing look like and sound like?  It looks an awful lot like the very thinking you are doing right now...but that does not make it a very good demonstrator sport. 

This is the constant challenge for all of us as teachers.  To make the invisible visible.  The good news?  Students - and all of us - synthesize and summarize outside of text and outside and inside of school often.  Think about that day a sub was with your students.  At least a couple of students, if not more, shared what happened while you were gone - They summarized the day for you.  Returning from school breaks, our kids love to tell us about their vacations or the long weeks they were "stuck at home with nothing to do."  They synthesize the events of their lives into a one to two minute versions.  And interestingly, in the oral mode, our students somehow naturally know to share the important parts or points, share these in order, and not tell us too much. 

Students' natural disposition to summarize orally gives us fertile ground to launch their studies of synthesizing what they are reading/learning in academic subjects.  I begin a study of synthesis by first helping students see how they already do this in their everyday lives.  And I ground a great deal of their early learning and practice in the oral modes of synthesis.  Storytelling.  Retelling family tales.  Recounting field trips.  Summarizing favorite movies. Synthesizing the last five episodes of the Wild Kingdom. 

Over the next few weeks, I will share options for guiding your students into an edifying study of Synthesis.  To begin at the beginning, let's wrestle with one of the greatest challenges of teaching synthesis - defining it. 

Honoring the Hardest Parts:  Part I

One of my favorite mentors, P. David Pearson, names synthesis as "…a summary plus the reader’s own opinion or thinking."                                                           

 

Former Rigby classmate, Lori Oczkus (2004) illuminates synthesis as more than retelling:  "During reading, good readers naturally form a big picture of the reading material that may include an evolving theme, moral, or point of view." 

PEBC colleagues and authors, Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis, define synthesis here (and below):  "Synthesizing is the most complex of the comprehension strategies. Synthesizing lies on a continuum of evolving thinking. Synthesizing runs the gamut from taking stock of meaning while reading to achieving new insight. Introducing the strategy of synthesizing in reading, then primarily involves teaching the reader to stop every so often and think about what she has read. Each piece of additional information enhances the reader’s understanding and allows her to better construct meaning.

We need to explicitly teach our students to take stock of meaning while they read and use it to help their thinking evolve, perhaps leading to new insight, perhaps not, but enhancing understanding in the process. To nudge readers toward synthesis, we encourage them to interact personally with the text. Personal response gives readers an opportunity to explore their evolving thinking. Synthesizing information integrates the words and ideas in the text with the reader’s personal thoughts and questions and gives the reader the best shot at achieving new insight."

(p. 144 – 145)   




Synthesizing Learners…

v make information their own

v transform other’s knowledge into something new, and therefore, more personally meaningful

v share what is important in a way that makes sense

v develop a keen sense of curiosity about a topic, question, problem, etc.

v generate new ideas

v connect experiences, information and learnings across media sources and over time

v distill their understandings into big ideas and important aha’s

v are left changed

Sources:  PEBC Scholars  and “Well Read” in Improving Adolescent Literacy:  Content Area Strategies at Work (2008) and Language Arts Workshop:  Purposeful Reading and Writing Instruction (2006) both by Douglas Fisher & Nancy Frey.

And in my next posts, I will share key metaphors I use in building the concept of synthesis with and for a group of students...

...cooking being one of my favorite ways to describe synthesis with growing thinkers...

 

 

 

and Quilts being another favorite synthesis metaphor!

 

“We know that students who struggle often make up their minds about the major themes and ideas in a text early in their reading.  Despite abundant evidence that the plot is evolving and the meaning changing, they fail to adjust their interpretations as they read further.”    Richard Allington 2006; Kylene Beers 2003

“We need to explicitly teach our students to take stock of meaning while they read & use it to help their thinking evolve, perhaps leading to new insight, perhaps not, but enhancing understanding in the process. To nudge readers toward synthesis, we encourage them to interact personally with the text. Personal response gives readers an opportunity to explore their evolving thinking. Synthesizing information integrates the words & ideas in the text with the reader’s personal thoughts & questions and gives the reader the best shot at achieving new insight.”   Stephanie Harvey and Annie Goudvis, Strategies That Work

“The process of ordering, recalling, retelling, and recreating into a coherent whole the information with which our minds are bombarded every day.  It is the uniquely human trait that permits us to sift through a myriad of details and focus on those pieces we need to know and remember.”   Ellin Keene and Susan Zimmermann, Mosaic of Thought

Thinking with the end in mind, here are some thoughts about what to nurture and look for in students' synthesis work:
From Michelle Kelly and Nicki Clausen-Grace's (2007) brilliant book, Comprehension Shouldn't Be Silent:  From Strategy Instruction to Student Independence, coach students to reflect on their summarizing journeys and habits.

SUMMARIZING SELF-EVALUATION TOOL

 

Summarizing requires the reader to cognitively engage with the text many times on various levels and is often text dependent.  As we researched and reflected on (our own summarizing and our students’ summarizing), we identified several components.  To help me summarize:

*          I read the text features and predict the main ideas.

*          I reflect on my predictions and either confirm or revise it.

*          I read the text features and think how they relate to the main idea.

*          I notice bold and italic words and think about how they relate to the main idea.

*          I read subheadings and titles and think about how they relate to the main idea.

*          I identify a section of text that I can read and remember.

*          I stop at the end of a section of text to connect, visualize, or remember what I’ve read.

*          I answer questions I have asked.

*          I reread to verify important ideas.

*          I reread to clarify meaning.

*          I reread to choose supporting details and facts.

*          I eliminate unimportant details.

*Pages 157 – 158 and 216

Synthesis Practice and Modeling Texts

Scrapbook Albums

Trip/Vacation Journals (online; bound texts; shared exampled)

Mistakes That Work (Slinky; Playdoh)

Oh, Yikes!  Oh, Yucks! 

    

     Autobiographies                                                                       Baby Albums
     Biographies                                                                              Book Reviews
     Christmas Letters                                                                     Diaries
     Do-it-yourself Manuals/Guides                                               Itineraries
     Journals                                                                                    Letters
     Many Magazines                                                                      Memoir
     Movie Reviews                                                                         Newspapers
     Non-Fiction Books                                                                   Obituaries
     Post Card Trip Summaries                                                       Professional Books
     Recaps                                                                                      Research
     Storytelling                                                                               Trip Photos
     TV Guide                                                                                  Updates
     Year Books                                                                               Brochure

*Much more to come soon!