Monday, September 6, 2010

Teaching Students how to Summarize

The I-Tunes conference really made me re-think the way I teach literacy in my classroom. The first unit for English 11 in Norfolk is the Non-fiction unit, and my 11th grade team begins with teaching students about Native American myths. When I looked in the SOL (red) warm-up book for the passage from the myth "When Grizzles Walked Upright," I noticed that the summarizing literacy strategy was used for the multiple-choice questions. Thus, thinking back on what I learned from the conference, I designed my lesson completely around the summarizing strategy. The students and I will read the first myth together, and we will complete the "Somebody Wanted But So" activity in order to summarize the myth; then, the students will read the second myth and complete the SWBS statement independently. I will then use their SWBS statement to assess whether or not they summarized the myth correctly. After I realized what "magnificent seven" strategy I wanted to use in my lesson, the rest of the lesson fell into place!

1 comment:

  1. I think once you begin to use the strategies they will complete like second nature. I think the students will greatly benefit from the Magnificent Seven strategies presented.

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