Summarizing with Graphic Organizers

Carol Brewer
May 16, 2011

How Do Graphic Organizers Support Summarizing?

As part of the Learning-Focused Acquisition Lesson, summarizing as a strategy is included during Assessment Prompts and at the conclusion of the lesson. Summarizing strategies check for student understanding of the knowledge or skills you intended for them to learn in a strategic way. They are used throughout the lesson to ensure student understanding of what has been taught.

I recommend having your students use graphic organizers as a tool to help them when summarizing. As students read, they take notes on a graphic organizer. Then, students use the graphic organizer, instead of the text, to summarize what they have learned. You can even display an example graphic organizer or student completed graphic organizer to the class in order to make the connection from the assignment to the Lesson Essential Question. Your expectation should be that students always write a summary from the graphic organizer. This summary might be an index card stapled to the graphic organizer or a text box added to the end of the organizer for students to write their summary. 

The following examples show how students can summarize from their graphic organizers:
                              

Depending on your individual students, you may need to help them get started with writing from a graphic organizer by providing them with sentence starters or paragraph ideas. For example, students can write, “Today I learned…”.  This reflection could state the steps in the process from a math, science, or social studies lesson. You can also have students use their summaries and graphic organizers as one of their tools when doing scheduled reviews throughout the year.