Summarizing or Synthesizing?

Chapter 11 in Stephanie Harvey's Strategies That Work was about summarizing and synthesizing. This chapter was very interesting for me to read. While we summarize what we read frequently, synthesizing information is never a strategy that I have taught my kindergarten students. It was really interesting for me to read about synthesizing. According to Harvey, the difference between synthesizing and summarizing is using our background knowledge. To synthesize, we must rely on what we already know to adjust or change the way we are thinking. We merge all of our thoughts together to create deeper meaning of a text. Summarizing is just using our own words to retell a story.

To be completely honest, I have never thought of myself as a good reader. Growing up I was never confident of my ability to read. I did not enjoy reading and I was a classic "word caller." Reading the chapter alone gave me a much better understanding. As I become a great reading teacher, I am realizing that I was always a good reader. I do all of these things, I had just never heard them called these things before. We did a lot of "round robin" reading and not much else.  Still, I will always be a visual learner. I needed to see teachers modeling how to teach synthesizing for their students. 

I could not get this video to upload, but here is the link: It is excellent to watch someone else model teaching. It is definitely one of the greatest tools for me.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=synthesizing+reading&sm=3

This week I plan to talk to my students about how to synthesize as we read. While it may be difficult for them to articulate it, I can model this after watching the video.