Comprehension: Oral Summarization – Paragraph Shrinking



Paragraph Shrinking: A Strategy for Paraphrasing & Summarization (Adapted from Fuchs, Fuchs, Mathes, & Simmons, 1997)

Description/Rationale

The ability to summarize is an essential skill of virtually all effective readers. Fuchs, Fuchs, Mathes, & Simmons (1997) found that teaching students to summarize narrative and expository texts using the paragraph shrinking strategy was an effective tactic to boost student engagement and reading comprehension. Paragraph shrinking combines the cognitive skills of; naming the main idea, identification of important details,

paraphrasing, and summarization into one simple yet effective strategy. Students are taught to read a paragraph and perform the following steps: 1) name the “who or the what” the paragraph is about, 2) elaborate the most important details about the “who/what”, and 3) state the gist of the paragraph in ten words or less. The purpose of challenging students to state the gist of the paragraph in 10-15 words or less is simply to encourage them to paraphrase the text using their own words, images, and language structures. The “10-15 words or less” becomes something of a game for students and can add a bit of spice to wrestling a difficulty textbook or informational article. . Paragraph shrinking can work effectively with both narrative and expository text, however with narrative text students will often need to read a few paragraphs to cover enough information to construct a meaningful summary Paragraph Shrinking lends itself to a structured peer mediation process in which students take turns performing each step of the strategy with the classroom teacher mediating each step coaching students through the process.

It is critical that teachers carefully structure the partner dialogue to ensure that every student has multiple opportunities to practice the difficult skills of paraphrasing and summarizing. Keys to effective structure include; assign partners using alternate ranking (e.g. higher performing students with middle, middle with lower), designate specific roles (e.g. ones and twos), clarify each step of the task (e.g. “ones tell twos the important details about the ‘what’, ones listen and add anything else you think is important…”), conclude with a focused whole class discussion as the topic warrants.

Steps

1. Partner students using alternate ranking (i.e. rank order your students via overall literacy/English proficiency and pair #1 with #16 and so on). Designate students 1-15 as “ones” and 16-30 as “twos”.

2. Model the Paragraph Shrinking strategy for your students using a text that is relatively undemanding so they can focus their attention on learning the steps of the summarization strategy – take care to model your thinking – thinking aloud where you model how one figures out what the main idea is, how to discern an essential from a trivial detail, etc.

i. Identify the “who or the what” the paragraph is about

(* in expository texts it is usually a “what”)

ii. Identify important details about the “who or what”

iii. State the gist/summarize the paragraph in 10-15 words or less

iv. Record the “shrink” in your summary notes

3. After sufficient modeling (I do it) begin to turn more responsibility over the the students as you do part of the process and prompt them to complete each step (We do it), then move into a considerable amount of structured partner practice or “Y’all do it” as you monitor and provide feedback and guidance.

Sample Partner Prompting:

* 1’s” tell 2’s the who/what the paragraph/section is about

- teacher debriefs based on what students had to say

* 2’s tell 1’s most important thing about the who/what

- teacher debriefs - call on students randomly (or faux randomly – looks random but is actually strategic or purposeful)

* 1’s say the main idea in 10-15 (teacher specifies any number from 10-15, – key is, limit the “shrink” so students can’t simply repeat a sentence from the text – think of the “shrink” as a “paraphrasing straight jacket”) words or less, 2’s count, if more than the specified number, ask your partner to “shrink it”

* teacher debriefs whole class to ensure understanding

** Reverse roles and continue the process throughout the remaining paragraphs/ sections of text.

3. As the students become more proficient it is important to turn more and more of the process over to the students with teacher debriefing at the end of all four steps, not after each individual step. The process for all cognitive strategies is “gradual release” as you move through the “I do it, We do it, Y’all do it, You do it” phases of guided instruction until students internalize the strategy can do it independently.

Additional Tips for Mixed Ability/Intervention Classes

1. Choose shorter less demanding texts to initially describe and model the oral summarization strategy of Paragraph Shrinking.

2. Guide students to read it 3 times instead of only twice – once chorally, a second time using the oral cloze (looking for the main idea/topic) and a

third time silently looking for critical details associated with the topic.

* key idea: each read of the text students have a specific task/purpose

3. Clearly model your thinking as you identify the topic (“who or what”), elaborate the topic’s key details, and make a statement of the gist in 10 words or less. The more students can have a window into your thinking, not simply watch you perform the steps, the easier they will be able to grasp the task for summarizing.

4. Break the four steps of Paragraph Shrinking into four separate phases, providing detailed practice until students are ready to put them all together;

a. Read a paragraph and simply identify the topic, clarify

How you know it is a topic cues in the text, etc.

b. Read a paragraph and identify both the topic and related essential details.

c. Read a paragraph and identify the topic, details, and paraphrase the gist in 10-15 words or less.

5. The note taking option is especially useful in text book/information reading and provides students with a concrete summary of the entire reading to be used later for oral retelling, study, writing assignments, etc.

6. With older students and/or more sophisticated texts you may change the paraphrasing task to 15-20 words instead of just 10-15.

Sources:

Fuchs, L., Fuchs, D, Mathes, P, & Simmons, D. (1997). Peer-assisted learning strategies: making classrooms more responsive to diversity, American Educational Research Journal, 34(1), 174 – 206.

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Summarizing is an essential skill for all readers.

Structured dialogue is the key to engaging all students in paragraph shrinking.

Thinking Aloud is a key to effective modeling.

Making the covert act of thinking, overt and explicit – providing a

mental “window” …

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