Round One: For a difficult reading assignment, ask students to write a 250-word summary (or whatever you think would be an appropriate length), and bring 3-4 copies to class. In small groups or pairs, have students exchange and read each other’s summaries, marking up any points they think need to be changed or revised. I ask students to underline inaccuracies, mark passages that are the student’s views or evaluations rather than author’s, and indicate with an asterisk any portion of the summary that provides disproportionate coverage of a minor point. Then the group should discuss the differences they see, with the goal of choosing the most accurate of the summaries to share with a larger group in round two. Groups can also choose to combine and/or revise the summaries based on their discussion. When two summaries diverge in their interpretation of some aspect of the assigned reading, students must examine the differences, consult the text for clarification, and d!
ebate why one student’s understanding is more accurate than another’s. This discussion requires close, attentive reading, and in the process students will deepen or complicate other group members’ assumptions about particular points in the text. Inevitably, students will also begin to share their reactions to and views on the material, and this provides an excellent starting point for further classroom debate and application.
Round Two: This round serves as a “check point” to ensure that each group has accurately understood the material. Have two or more groups combine into a larger group. Each smaller group then reads its selected summary out loud, and then the larger group examines their differences and similarities in order to choose the best one. These can then be shared aloud with the entire class as the basis for a deeper discussion and clarification of key concepts. It may also be an opportunity to examine the structure of the assigned reading, and to evaluate its logic, evidence, and/or methodology.
Round Three: Ask each group to take their summary and further condense it into a much smaller number of sentences. As the groups finish, have a representative type the short summary on the computer so that the class can compare and discuss them together. These shorter summaries require students to identify the center of the reading and distinguish it from important (but peripheral or supporting) arguments.
At any stage in this activity, you can focus the discussion on matters such as: difficult passages or terms around which there still may be confusion; how students discerned major points from examples, supporting evidence, or sub-arguments; and what students learned about summary writing by engaging in the class activity. You may even want to survey students about the extent of revision their own summaries needed once they had discussed the reading with classmates, or, depending on the course level, you might spend some time on basic summary conventions such as using attributive tags.
2. Marginalia:
I've developed two different activites using marginal notes, but I'll describe just one here. I give students a check list with four different types of marginal notes that a reader can make: summarize/comprehend; interact/evaluate; extend; rhetorically analyze.
Their assignment is to mark up a reading only with marginalia -- no underlining or highlighting. I require that they include marginal notes from all four categories. In class, discussing their notations results in a rich discussion. Most important, it makes the reading process explicit and discussing this is the most valuable part of the activity.
From WPA-L
Mary Goldschmidt, Ph.D.
Director, The Writing Program
The College of New Jersey
609.771.2864
Director, The Writing Program
The College of New Jersey
609.771.2864
10/31/09
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