Reunited . . . and It Feels So Good

     This week I had the good fortune of being reacquainted with a dear, old friend: the summarizer. I'm working (in my instructional coach capacity) with a lovely teacher who is currently looking into establishing some new routines for her classes, including expanding her end-of-class routines. What a great goal! Fun fact: Did you know that, according to most of the brain-based learning research out there, what students retain the most from a class is based on what they did during the first five minutes and the last five minutes? Bring on those activators and summarizers!

     So, in the hopes of helping out the afore-mentioned teacher I am working with, I went straight to my Research for Better Teaching handy-dandy little spiral-bound text of summarizing goodies, aptly named Summarizers: Activity Structures to Support Integration and Retention of New Learning.  What a lovely reunion we had, this book and I. I had forgotten how many great, easy, practical ideas were to be found within its pages. And so, in the spirit of giving, for this week's post I decided to share with you some of the book's best. Yes, readers, even though I just became reunited with this old flame, I am sharing it with you. Some things are so great, you just cannot keep them to yourself.

     You may also find that these ideas are a bit of a reunion for you as well. Sometimes what I love best about stumbling across an old resource (Shhh! Don't tell my Summarizers book I called it "old!") is not the fact that I am necessarily learning anything new, but the experience of thinking, "Oh yeah! I remember doing that (or something quite like it) with my students once and it worked really well. Now why the heck did I stop doing that?" So, I hope the following ideas from my newly-reunited-with-me book will either make you remember something you used to do with your classes and want to be reunited with, or present you with some new and helpful ideas.

     Here we go:

ABC

Easy as 123. Simple as do re mi. ABC. 123. Baby you and me girl. This easy-to-do summarizer might just have you and your students singing like The Jackson 5, too. Here's how it works (or one variation of it, anyway): Each student pulls a letter of the alphabet out of a fishbowl and then creates a summary sentence about the day's topic starting with the given letter (for example, if a student pulls a "B," then they must write a sentence summarizing the day's lesson that starts with the letter "B"). If you still have those pesky couple of minutes left before the bell rings that are starting to cause you to panic because you already started the summarizer and kids know class is over and they're done and they're going to start packing up -- aaaaaagggghh!, then you can always have students share their sentences in alphabetical order. OR, you could start class the next day by having students share, which would serve as a nice reminder before your new lesson begins.

Inside Outside Circle

Sorry. No song to go along with this one. Here, each student is asked to prepare one question (and corresponding answer) about some aspect of the day's lesson. Then, students form inner and outer circles, with the inner circle facing the outer circle, so that each student is paired up with someone. Pairs take turns asking their questions of one another and helping each other if necessary in answering the questions. When this exchange is over students exchange question cards. Then the inner or the outer circle moves three people to the right, students face off and begin a new round. Hey -- and you don't have to worry about that pesky last minute of class sneaking up on you.  Just keep the circles rotating as long as you need to!

Luck of the Draw

You feeling lucky, punk? (Whew! I'm glad I squeezed in a pop culture reference for this one after my failure to do so with the last strategy! Redemption is mine!) Okay, so Luck of the Draw is designed to ensure that each class period will begin with a quick summary of what happened in and was important from the previous class. All student names are on cards in a container. At the beginning of class, the teacher pulls out a name and announces who has won the Luck of the Draw. This student will begin tomorrow's class with a summary of today's class. This kills a few birds with one stone (I love using that expression, but it's just so gruesome!). First, it allows you to check an individual student's understanding of a lesson. And it also leads to a quick, prepared summary for the next day's lesson to begin with. In addition to reminding everyone of what was accomplished the day before, this ensures that any students who were absent the previous day are given a quick heads-up on what they missed. Some suggestions: Provide the Luck of the Draw winner with a summarizing sheet to fill out that asks for "what we did," "the most important things we learned and should remember," and a list of homework assignments. The student can also attach any handouts to be given to students who were absent that day. Also, the teacher I've been working with came up with the great idea to not return the student's name to the container, thereby ensuring that eventually every student in the room will have his or her name pulled.

     I hope you enjoyed these three ideas. (***Did you notice how none of them involved a lot of teacher prep?***) There's plenty more where that came from. Want to know more, and teach in the same district as me? Then, shoot me an email or call my office -- let's explore summarizers together!

In the interest of citing sources, here's the citation information of this fun book:

Saphier, J. & Haley, M.A. (1993). Summarizers: activity structures to support integration 

     and retention of new learning. Research for Better Teaching, Inc.: Acton, MA.