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!

Learning, Loving, and Living Nonfiction

Nonfiction Literacy Supporting Students as Growing Informational Writers, Readers, and Thinkers

Nonfiction writers are teachers and nonfiction texts teach readers.  Nonfiction authors share their wisdom with their readers.  But the beauty of nonfiction writing is not just that it teaches others – Nonfiction writing actually teaches the writer first.  Nonfiction writing gives all of us essential opportunities to make sense of information, an event, a question, a problem, and, in fact, our lives.
 

For growing writers, by engaging in daily nonfiction writing, students are writing to learn. They put their new learning into their own words.  They map connections between what they know to what they are learning by weaving together their thoughts through writing.  As Deidra Gammill (2006) shared in her Reading Teacher article “Learning the WRITE Way” -
 

Writing is a tool for thinking. All knowledge is best absorbed

and applied when students make it their own. Writing-to-learn

allows students to make inferences, draw upon prior knowledge,

and synthesize material, therefore taking their thought processes

to an evaluative level (according to Bloom’s taxonomy). Educators

are better able to assess what students learn as well. A student’s

ability to simply repeat facts is not a true measure of his or her

education. No other exercise in the classroom generates higher

thinking skills than does writing.
 

So by inviting your students into a study of nonfiction literacy, you are expanding their tools to teach others with their writing and deepen their understanding by taking the stance of learner-reader.  All my life, I have turned to nonfiction writing.  How wonderful to give this gift in even bigger ways to our students!  

L.B., 2012
 

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.                                   

Barbara Kingsolver

For me, writing is almost ahead of the process of thinking, because my way of thinking about something is sitting down and writing about it.    

Andrei Codrescu in Ben Yagoda’s The Sound of the Page (2005)

 

Help students learn how to craft their own nonfiction texts by reading nonfiction wide awake to the how's and why's of nonfiction authors' craft.  Model, name, and explain crafts such as...

Nonfiction Text Features Adapted from Reading and Writing Informational Text by Nell Duke

Ø Headings and Subheadings or Chapter Titles

Ø Table of Contents

Ø Realistic visuals such as illustrations (sometimes) and/or photographs (more often)

Ø Graphics such as diagrams, charts, graphs, tables, maps, etc.

Ø  Organization/Structures [see next page]

Ø  An opening statement/general classification (e.g., “Ants are a kind of insect.”)

Ø  A general statement/closing (e.g., “Ants are interesting to study.”)

Ø  Description of attributes/components (e.g., “Ants have six legs.”) and/or characteristic events (e.g., “Ants eat sugar.”)

Ø  Frequent repetition of the topical theme (Ants…Ants…Ants…etc.)

Ø  Timeless verb constructions (Ants carry sand as opposed to carried, are carrying, etc.)

Ø  Generic noun constructions (Ants carry sand as opposed to the ant, Joe, or that ant carries, etc.)

Ø  Specialized vocabulary (thorax, colony)

Ø Font Features:  boldfaced print; italics; color coded; size

Ø Classifications and definitions

Ø Labels and captions

Ø Index

Ø Glossary

Ø Symbols and locators

  

Research:  Why knowing text features is important to students’ literacy growth from Duke & Kays, 1998; Pappas, 1986; 1987; 2002; and Purcell-Gates & Duke, 2001

Nonfiction  Text  Structures Nonfiction texts are organized with patterns such as: v Main Idea and Details   v Compare and Contrast   v Opposites   v Description   v Question and Answer   v Steps in a Process   v Parts of the Whole   v Cause and Effect   v Classification   v Sequence   v Problem-Solution

...and teach students how to use Thinking Strategies to

 understand nonfiction texts...

Studying the Thinking Strategy of QUESTIONING to deepen students' capacity and desire to understand nonfiction texts.

Studying the Thinking Strategy of MONITORING FOR MEANING to help students understand how to talk to themselves before, during, and after they read nonfiction texts. 

 

Nonfiction Reading Comprehension :
Tips for better understanding

! Activate background knowledge - This is very important in nonfiction reading,  particularly if the reader has limited knowledge about the content area.

! Make connections between the known and the new.  Nonfiction readers can be encouraged to think carefully about content they already know when they meet new information so that they can anchor it to past knowledge to enhance understanding.

! Ask questions— Nonfiction readers are full of questions, particularly when they read about less-familiar content. They can be encouraged to write their questions down, think about them and search for answers.

 

! Use the features of nonfiction to support understanding, and remember important information—  Information in nonfiction comes from the features as well as the text. The bold print, italics, framed text, photographs, maps, diagrams, graphs, charts etc. support the reader to better understand.

! Read for the gist, stopping and thinking as you go— Nonfiction reading is more like a slide show or a newscast than a movie in your mind. Nonfiction readers need to stop frequently to think about the information they have read. They need to synthesize  as they go.

! Read with a pen in hand—  When reading nonfiction, we meet large amounts of unfamiliar information. We are far more likely to remember information if we jot some-thing down, highlighting or coding as we go. We also meet compelling information and then stop and think about it, often asking a question or making a connection.

! Pay attention to your inner conversation when meeting new information—  Nonfiction reading is reading to learn. Nonfiction readers must be aware of when they learn new information. They can listen to their inner voice and notice what they hear when they meet new information, i.e. "I never knew that before" and then mark it in writing to help remember it later.

Source:  http://scholastic.com

 

Get more high-interest nonfiction books into your classrooms.

&   Infuse more short and spirited collections of nonfiction texts into your library collections and into each student’s reading well/book box.

 

&   Actively see high-interest books that make it possible for a student to read the whole text.

&   Build text sets that offer multiple perspective on a topic so that students can practice the high-level analysis and comparative work that the Common Core promotes.

 

&   Get many, many high quality, print-rich journals into your classrooms. 

&   Access digital sources.

&   Letter writing pays off.

&   Do an archaeological dig of your schools.

&   Infuse more information reading and writing into content area classes. 

&   Match your readers to nonfiction texts.                                                                                   

 

Adapted from  Pathways to the Common Core: Accelerating Achievement  by Calkins, Ehrenworth, and Lehman (2012)

Guidelines for Matching Readers to Nonfiction Texts

& When students are reading nonfiction texts, you can use the same tools and methods that you use to assess their abilities to handle fiction texts. 

Ask a student to read a text aloud, and note whether he or she reads with fluency (it sounds like talk), 96% accuracy, and comprehension (at the very least, the reader can teach you what he or she read).  You needn’t use a formal tool – assess a reader with any book which you know the level of text difficulty.  If you want a tool, use Fountas and Pinnell’s as they bring a long track record to this work.

& Expect that on the whole, your students will usually be far less experienced as readers of expository texts than as readers of fiction. 

When in doubt, move students to expository books that are one notch easier than the fiction books they can read and ask them to read a lot of texts.  The exception will be if the student is an avid reader of nonfiction or if the reader has deep knowledge of the topic. 

& If a student wants to read an informational text that you believe might be a bit too difficult, the best way to support the reader is to teach the reader how to find more introductory texts on the same topic. 

This essential skill will be a lifesaver in college (and life!). 

& If a student has never seen a vocabulary word before and mispronounces the word, see if the student can ascertain what the challenging word means. 

If he or she has the meaning right and can say a close approximation of the word, this suggests the student is making sense while he or she reads.  If the reader can do this work with 95% of the otherwise “too hard” words, then the reader’s miscues suggest the book may be within reach for him or her. 

& Be aware that the colorful and dramatic pictures often make nonfiction texts look easier to read than they are.  Don’t be fooled by the pretty pictures.

Source:  Pathways to the Common Core: Accelerating Achievement by Calkins, Ehrenworth, and Lehman (2012) ~ p. 95-96