synthesizing
Synthesizing occurs when a students merges new information with prior knowledge to form a new idea, perspective, or opinion. As students read, they remember familiar information, create new thinking, discover original ideas, and achieve insight to new perspectives. Synthesizing aids reading comprehension because it requires students to internalize new information into their own words and also combine the information with their prior knowledge. This process helps students to remember the information and be able to transfer it to new situations (Bumgarner, S., 2014).
Synthesizing occurs as a student reads to build comprehension.
During reading students:
A teacher could help students learn how to synthesize while reading by discussing synthesizing as a journey. Explain that readers pass familiar places, travel on uncharted roads, create new perspectives, think in new ways, discover original ideas, and achieve insight along the way. It can be helpful to create a poster for students to reference while following the journey. Once students understand the process of synthesizing, introduce a notes/thinking T-chart shown below. The left side of the chart is for notes and the right side is for questions. Then, start reading a short passage to model the process of using your own background knowledge, making connections to new information, and thinking of questions while reading. As you read, reflect your notes and questions on the chart for students to see. Once you are finished reading, answer the questions on your chart and use the notes to write a summary of the reading passage (Bumgarner, S., 2014).
When students understand the process of the T-chart, assign them a passage to read and a T-chart to fill in. Assist and observe students while they are reading and assess the charts with summaries after the lesson to check for understanding. This activity not only builds synthesizing skills for comprehension, but it is also a great way to help build students' writing skills because students will be required to write a summary. Students have to learn how to take the information they wrote on their chart and put it into sentences that will explain their understanding.
Synthesizing occurs as a student reads to build comprehension.
During reading students:
- Stop to collect their thoughts
- Identify the main idea
- Put information into their own words
- Respond to the information
- Combine new information into their own words and add to their prior knowledge
A teacher could help students learn how to synthesize while reading by discussing synthesizing as a journey. Explain that readers pass familiar places, travel on uncharted roads, create new perspectives, think in new ways, discover original ideas, and achieve insight along the way. It can be helpful to create a poster for students to reference while following the journey. Once students understand the process of synthesizing, introduce a notes/thinking T-chart shown below. The left side of the chart is for notes and the right side is for questions. Then, start reading a short passage to model the process of using your own background knowledge, making connections to new information, and thinking of questions while reading. As you read, reflect your notes and questions on the chart for students to see. Once you are finished reading, answer the questions on your chart and use the notes to write a summary of the reading passage (Bumgarner, S., 2014).
When students understand the process of the T-chart, assign them a passage to read and a T-chart to fill in. Assist and observe students while they are reading and assess the charts with summaries after the lesson to check for understanding. This activity not only builds synthesizing skills for comprehension, but it is also a great way to help build students' writing skills because students will be required to write a summary. Students have to learn how to take the information they wrote on their chart and put it into sentences that will explain their understanding.
Another great activity to help student learn how to synthesize is called a synthesizing target. At the start of the lesson, the teacher should explain how one’s thinking could change during reading when presented with new information. When this happens, it is helpful to record the thinking on a target template. The teacher should model making a target by drawing a large circle with a smaller circle in the middle. As the teacher reads a short passage, he or she will write their thinking in the smaller circle. Then, each time the teacher’s thinking changes, it should be written in the larger ring of the target. This process will help students learn synthesizing skills and could also build writing skills by having the students write a summary of the passage based off of their target when they finished reading (Reading Strategies, 2009). The Teacher could assess each student’s target and summary to check for understanding at the end of the lesson.
Videos
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZJcIOMbnDg
In this video, Marisa Rameriz models how to teach students about synthesizing. She starts her lesson by holding a review discussion because her students have prior knowledge of how to synthesize during reading. After the students have had time to refresh their memory, Rameriz uses a read aloud and models how to use synthesizing with a think aloud. She engages her students by allowing them to participate in the think aloud and it also helps her to assess if students understand the process of synthesizing (Rameriz, M., 2012). |
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The teacher in this video is instructing a unit on synthesizing and creating summaries. She starts the lesson by conducting a whole group discussion on what is means to synthesize and writes it on a large piece of paper for her students to view. Then, she reads a couple pages of an article from an educational magazine to model how to synthesize information. Once students understand the process, the teacher hands out a template for student to write down notes, comments, thinking, and questions about the rest of the article. Once students finish the template and article, the teacher helps students to write a summary of the article. During this lesson, the teacher observes students to assess for understanding and may collect the written work from students to assess as well (Aarcos15, 2013).
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