Synthesize

What is Synthesizing?

• Reviewing, sorting and sifting through information leading to new insight as thinking evolves

• The process involves identifying the key concepts as they read, putting those concepts in their own words and explaining why the concept is important and/or making connections to other concepts.

Synthesizingmay be referred to or

include:• Taking stock of meaning• Monitoring meaning• Getting the “gist”• “Aha” experience (new insight)• Searching and selecting• Refining your thinking

• requires helping students to use a number of textual clues that will help them determine the key concepts in a reading. 

Using this strategy… 

Targeted Reading Skillsfor this Strategy:

• Condense or summarize ideas from one or more texts

• Distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information

• Compare/contrast information from one or more texts

• Make text-to-text, text-to-self, and/or text-to-world connections

Some elements that will aid students in the identification of key concepts are:

– Examining the text structure for any elements that the writer/publisher may have used to indicate major divisions in the subject matter (e.g. titles, subtitles, bold headings, and supportive graphics or visuals)

– Determining which sentence in a paragraph is the topic sentence; as texts get more sophisticated, students need to recognize that frequently it may not be the first sentence in the paragraph.

– Learning to identify statements that “forecast” main ideas or key concepts that will come at some point later on in the reading.

– Recognizing that transitions may sometimes help to identify a main idea or a possible shift in the writer’s thinking.  (e.g. when compared to, or another possibility is, or in contrast, etc.)

– Examining the summary statements in the paragraphs and/or the conclusions that summarize each section of the reading may help to verify and condense the main ideas or key concepts.

• Providing models and guided practice where students have opportunities to identify and explain the above elements is crucial.  Once students can understand and recognize these elements, provide them with sections of the current text they are reading and have them practice independently as preparation for the next class. 

• As students become more proficient in recognizing these elements as they read, a powerful addition is to have them identify these elements in their own writing.

During and after reading, I:

• Determine whether this resource meets my needs

• Decide what is important and summarize the

information to capture the gist of the text

• Integrate new information with what I already know, and create a new understanding of the text

• Determine the impact of this text on me • Learn about myself as a learner

How could I use, adapt or differentiate it?

• If this is a new strategy for your students, it is helpful to make copies of a section of the text so that they can highlight and annotate; this process alone will encourage a close reading of the text even before they complete the graphic organizer.

• When first using this strategy with your students, you may want to have them identify the various elements that helped them to zero in on the main ideas or key concepts.  This could be noted in the Key Concept column under the concept or in the margins of the annotated text.  

• For students that are more visual and/or artistic, they may want to use a mind map to capture the key concepts and their connections.

• Once students have completed the graphic organizer, they can share their ideas with other students to discuss how/why they identified the key concepts they selected.

Synthesizing Strategies

Graphic Organizer

Journals

• Synthesis journals take multiple perspectives on a topic from various sources and attempt to synthesize them all. It may include information the teacher has presented, information from a text, a video, guest speaker ("author says"), information gleaned from classmates, and personal experiences and information from the students. Once all of the perspectives have been presented, the student takes all of them to develop an overall synthesis. Because this is a complex process, it may need to be modeled by the teacher beforehand.

Questioning

I combine what I know with new information to understand the text.

• Now I get it!...• This makes me think of...• I learned that ...• I understand this because of ....

Exit Slips• Purpose:

To give students the opportunity to anonymously let the instructor know that they are having difficulty with the material being studied.

• Procedure: Admit slips are brief comments that students write on index

cards or half sheets of paper at the beginning of class or before class. The comments are about the material being studied and could be answers to questions such as: – “What’s confusing you about ?”– “What problems did you have with your assignment?”

The admit slips are collected from the students as their admission into the classroom. The instructor can then address the questions the students have asked about the material. Exit slips are written toward the end of class. Students can use exit slips to summarize, synthesize, or evaluate the material they learned in class that day. Exit slips can also be used as a way for students to project what they have learned onto material that will be taught the next class session.

Rubric

People Search

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZsghID3bh_UC&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=people+search+lenski+wham+johns&source=web&ots=D34xmEBtBl&sig=TMgwP0BToEyX5R1q_mHUCkIbbWs&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA12,M1

Links• http://www.naperville203.org/assets/literacyGrk-2Synthesize.pdf• http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/de/resources/litgarden/comprehensionstrategies.html• http://www.eworkshop.on.ca/cfmx/edu/pdf/Mod21_comp_synthesizing.pdf• http://www.sarasota.k12.fl.us/sarasota/interdiscrdg.htm• http://www.kenton.k12.ky.us/academic/strategies.htm#Synthesizing• http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/instruction/ela/6-12/reading/Reading%20Strate

gies/reading%20strategies%20index.htm• http://literacy-garden.tripod.com/Comprehension%20Strategies/Rubric

%20for%20Synthesizing.doc• http://books.google.com/books?

id=ZsghID3bh_UC&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=people+search+lenski+wham+johns&source=web&ots=D34xmEBtBl&sig=TMgwP0BToEyX5R1q_mHUCkIbbWs&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA12,M1

• http://literacy.kent.edu/eureka/strategies/admit_slips.pdf