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Gwinnett County Public Schools

Summarizing

Frequent Use Strategy

The Summarizing strategy ensures that students are frequently thinking about and communicating their learning. Summarizing allows students to capture, reflect, and organize their knowledge to build upon, access, and apply new knowledge and skills.

When using Summarizing, the teacher explicitly models through think-alouds, written expressions, and non-verbal representations how they justify their thinking, understanding, and reasoning. The teacher supports students' use of this strategy by listening, asking high-level questions, addressing any related knowledge or experience gaps, and providing frequent and specific feedback to help students refine their ability to summarize. Teachers provide opportunities for students to summarize throughout the learning process – not solely as an ending event. Students summarize learning frequently in ways that require them to recall, synthesize, and build upon their understanding.

Summarizing is not simply recall, at the end of a lesson. Summarizing is most effective when used to help students reflect and communicate their learning, when it is responsive to students’ experiences, and when it is intentionally and purposefully connected to authentic AKS and mastery learning.

References

Look Fors

The Teacher will…

  • design questions during learning to cause students to make connections, think strategically, and apply skills/content.
  • model skill through think alouds during the lesson and include opportunities for students to summarize their learning.

The Students will…

  • frequently reflect and communicate learning throughout the learning process.
  • use summarizing in a variety of contexts to make sense of problems, make connections, and ask questions.

 

Model Lessons

Informative Writing Based on a Text Set

Students will create questions centered around the AKS that force inquiry into the cause of war providing insight for students as they gather evidence.

Quadratic Functions: Every Graph Tells a Story

Students will use the say something protocol to respond to questions and discuss their thinking related to a graph presented.

Videos

Math ES 1195-4

In this video, the teacher designs a grade level appropriate question for students to use in communicating their learning at the end of a lesson.

Math ES 1196-1

In this video, the teacher provides an opportunity for students to reflect on their learning at the conclusion of math class. The teacher provides support in clarifying student thinking on the math concept.

Math HS 1207-16

In this video, the teacher provides a structure for students to summarize their learning.

Math HS 1219-12

In this video, teacher asks students to think strategically about the small group task and communicate their learning at the conclusion of the small group task.

Math MS 1219-9

In this video, the teacher provides an opportunity for students to communicate learning during the small group task.

QPTS Instructional Tech Toolkit for Teachers

For any questions with this guide or its content, please call Instructional Support at (678) 301-6804.