Simple instructional strategies that incorporate digital media in meaningful, effective, and practical ways.

That Sums It Up
When students summarize, they “strip away the extra verbiage and extraneous
examples, focus on the heart of the matter, try to find the key words and
phrases that, when uttered later, still manage to capture the gist of what we've
read. They are trying to capture the main ideas and the crucial details
necessary for supporting them.” (ReadingQuest.org) However, when we ask
students to summarize, they tend to write down everything. By focusing
students’ attention on five main words or phrases from media excerpts, we are
able to help them narrow down important concepts. Through discussions with
their peers, they are able to provide evidence for their decisions and compare
lists.

Materials: video segment, blank paper, and a writing utensil

1.  Find a video segment in Discovery Education that explains your topic or
concept.
2.  Explain to students that they will not be allowed to take notes while the video is
playing, but they should focus on the main idea presented. Play the segment.
3.  Tell students that you will re-play the video segment and they will be allowed to
take notes. They should focus on writing down items that support the big idea of
the segment.
4.  After the segment concludes, provide students a minute or two to write down
five ideas that are important to understanding the segment.
5.  Next, provide students three minutes to discuss their lists with a partner. They
should define what each word means in the context of the video and provide
evidence for why it expresses the main idea of the video.
6.  Provide an additional two minutes for students to combine their lists into one list
of six or seven words or phrases.
7.  Provide students with two additional minutes to write one sentence summaries
of the video.
8.  Have students share their summaries with the class.

Access more of these strategies at links.DiscoveryEducation.com/sos

Simple instructional strategies that incorporate digital media in meaningful, effective, and practical ways.

By focusing students’ attention on five main words or phrases we are able to

help them focus on important concepts. Through discussions with their peers,
they are able to provide evidence for their decisions. Sample student lists and
summaries might look like this:

Want to extend this strategy?

•  Have students form groups of 3-5 students. They will organize and arrange
their sentences to create a “movement for learning” formation (described
below). One student will be responsible for the opening sentence, one for the
closing, and the others for the main ideas in between.
•  Students will then stand in a line in front of the class, with the introduction first
and the closing last. The students will read their sentences to the class and
stomp at the end to represent the punctuation: one stomp of the foot for a
period, two stomps for a question mark, and three stomps for an exclamation
point.

Special Thanks:
« The ‘movement for learning’ extension of this strategy is courtesy of Monique Liles from
Clayton County, Georgia.

Access more of these strategies at links.DiscoveryEducation.com/sos