Summarizing Software

Fifth-graders learn efficient summarizing using a word processing feature

Tony Lucia used to be the only special education teacher for two elementary schools. He now teaches 29 fifth-graders. He brings his specialized training to the classroom and helps struggling students with the strategies he gleaned from years of focusing on special needs. Lucia wants to take advantage of technology to build his students' strategies for success. He decides to use basic productivity software to teach important skills.

Implementing Research-Based Strategies

When Lucia taught special education students, he focused on their unique needs. However, he learned that certain skills helped all students. One such skill was being able to summarize reading material when taking notes or studying.

Students who can effectively summarize are able to synthesize information. They can identify core concepts and decide which information is trivial. Most students simply take notes verbatim without summarizing or synthesizing. Successful note-takers summarize to arrive at a refined nugget of meaning, which they are much more likely to retain. Summarizing is an analytical process requiring careful consideration about what contributes to meaning, and research has recently indicated its value for improving learning overall.

• Well-designed notes can provide a powerful form of review for students (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001).


• A structured "rule-based strategy" that includes a specific set of steps can facilitate success in note taking (Brown, Campione, & Day, 1981).

Lucia intended to use the word processing program's "track changes" functions to teach his students the basics of summarizing and help them improve their note-taking and studying skills using technology.

Technology Supporting Success

Microsoft Word includes a feature that editors and reviewers use to track changes in shared documents, or versions of text. Lucia used a projection screen to demonstrate how to track changes on a sample of fifth-grade science text about water molecules. He reminded students that they might be given a test on this material. Within this writing they would find some key ideas, and some other details they would not need to remember. By focusing on the key ideas, students would increase their chances of remembering it.

Lucia demonstrated that using the track changes function allowed students to follow the rules of summarizing: Delete unnecessary or redundant sentences or words, replace with better or shorter ones, and create a topic sentence. In this case, he pointed out, the title made a fine topic sentence. He turned on "track changes" and worked his way through the paragraph. The tool allowed him to cross out extraneous content while leaving key ideas intact.

When Lucia reached the end of the passage, he had crossed out many words and whole sentences. (The words were still visible, but the strikethrough made it clear they were not essential.) Lucia also added a few words. The track changes tool automatically underlined these additions in red. After reviewing the edits, Lucia selected all the text in the full paragraph and clicked on the Accept Changes button.

The remaining paragraph was shorter, more concise, and a better summary to study. In making these selections, a great deal of reading and decisionmaking had taken place. Next, Lucia had students apply the same strategies for summarizing their own reading.

Lucia reminded students that examining the text requires thoughtful actions and assessment of what is and isn't important. As students practiced using the track changes tool on an additional passage of science text, he checked on their progress. He could see that asking students to delete extraneous text was helping them focus on essential content. This was the key to synthesizing, which meant they were making sense of the material. Next, he planned to show them how to use the highlight tool to draw attention to critical ideas or terms. At the end of the lesson, Lucia planned to have students print their summaries, then compare their work with a partner's results. Peer review is a useful step in helping students check for understanding.