Why Students Should Summarize

Denise Burson
Jul 12, 2010

Why Students Should Summarize
by Denise Burson

• Summarizing is perhaps the key thinking strategy for learning.
• Summarizing is a learning strategy, not a teaching strategy. Students themselves must summarize for the learning to construct meaning.
• When summarizing, students create a "schema" for the information and remember it better and longer.
• Effective summarizing leads to an increase in student learning. Students who can effectively summarize learn to synthesize information, a higher-order thinking skill which includes analyzing information, identifying key concepts, and defining extraneous information.
• Teachers facilitate summarizing when they have students answer the essential questions at the end of a lesson. This will also help you gather evidence of learning.
• When students summarize, their confusions, misconceptions, or misunderstandings surface and you can then adapt future teaching accordingly. It is key to knowing when and on what to re-teach.
• Student summarizing should be distributed throughout a lesson, not just at the end.

Summarizing Strategies for getting feedback on student learning:

Details on these and others available from Angelo & Cross, Classroom Assessment techniques, 1993.

For more Information on Summarizing order What Moves You - How to Get the Most From Summarizing Strategies.