Before we spend time discussing in more detail what a synthesis is, let’s talk about what it’s NOT: A synthesis is NOT the same as a summary. In addition to synthesizing the story as they read it, students also synthesized learning from fiction and nonfiction that deepened their study of butterflies. Fables are a useful genre for introducing synthesizing because of their short structure and straightforward messages. But they aren't always easy to teach in a meaningful way. Look at the character in multiple parts of the text. Each child’s individual square synthesizes what he or she found meaningful; together the quilt captures the overall spirit of the Underground Railroad. Part of learning this concept is that students are learning their thinking changes as they move through a text. Introduction To Summarizing And Synthesizing In informational text, synthesis is often the culmination of research or inquiry. Explain that at first when the pebble drops in the water, there is just a small ripple. Synthesizing for Real! How to synthesize the material you are reading and apply to your paper. Synthesizing is one of the most challenging reading strategies for students to master, simply because it requires students to use multiple skills and strategies together. Debbie Miller says synthesizing is “the process through which readers bring together their background knowledge and their evolving understanding of the book to create a complete and original understanding of the text.” (Reading with Meaning, p. 171). Download a FREE “Synthesizing” student bookmark in our Member’s Resource Library. We not only synthesize within a text, but across texts, especially when we are doing research or inquiry. They know the importance of their own thinking. You may find that as you begin using this strategy, students will likely confuse the two. It’s important that we teach our students to synthesize. Fables are great when you are just starting since they are short and have a lesson to be learned that isn’t revealed until the end. If you have a set, bring it in to show your class. Why do we teach children to summarize? SAMPLE LESSON: Synthesize Our Thinking in Fiction. How do we teach children to synthesize? As it was mentioned earlier, syntheses and summaries are related but NOT the same. To learn more about the strategies of Summarizing and Synthesizing, see Suggested Readings. 0:00: Owl: Welcome to Synthesizing What You Read, an instructional video on reading comprehension brought to you by the Excelsior College Online Writing Lab. Synthesizing a text is the process of pulling together background knowledge, newly learned ideas, connections, inferences and summaries into a complete and original understanding of the text. 5 Fantastic Strategies to Encourage Synthesizing . A summary may lead to a synthesis, but it’s not where it stops. In fact, the prefix “syn” means together.  S ynthesizing a text is the process of pulling together background knowledge What is Synthesizing? We collect new information, form new thoughts and ideas, and evolve our thinking. As children create murals, posters, or presentations to share their learning with authentic audiences, we teach them to express the big ideas about their topics in ways that are distinctly their own. … Reading comprehension strategies, like synthesizing, are an important part of students' development as readers. Use that pattern to name a trait. As noted above, “syn” means “together,” and these projects can be collaborative ones as well as individual. We use the language, “At first I thought…Then I read…Now I’m thinking…” The Sample Lesson for this section, “Synthesize Our Thinking in Fiction,” is derived from Debbie Miller’s approach. The information about creating an appropriate environment for a caterpillar and the human dimensions of caring for things in the natural world in Butterfly House added to the children’s appreciation of what it means to love and respect nature. As you read multiple texts, model both summaries AND syntheses of the same book to help students see the different. Create a T-chart as shown below to helps students identify the differences between a summary and a synthesis. Even more, a true synthesis can blend and integrate ideas from across multiple texts to form new big ideas. Summarizing requires focusing on what is important, and as noted in the Determining Importance section, children often think everything is equally important. We have seen examples of children synthesizing throughout this Reading Comprehension module, even though they had not yet been formally introduced to the strategy: • When first graders found answers to their questions about animals by combining information from more than one paragraph or page of text, they were synthesizing – taking ideas from different places and putting them together for their own purposes. It is like putting together parts of a picture. In addition to spending time discussing and modeling what a synthesis is and how to form them, you may also want to spend significant time helping students to see the difference between a summary and a synthesis. When students synthesize, they are made aware of how their thinking changes and evolves as they read a text. Like the ripples, our understanding becomes greater. After a few more times of practice, you can have students try out the strategy with longer texts. (See photographs above from the Guided Reading module.). We want our students to do more than parrot back what they’ve read. We can, however, lay a strong foundation in the primary grades for summarizing. We may do this subconsciously in easy text, but when the text gets more complicated, we often need to step back and summarize to check our understanding. Simply stated, we go into a text as a caterpillar and come out of it as a butterfly. In fact, the prefix “syn” means together. In fiction, Debbie Miller recommends teaching children that synthesis is like the ripples made by throwing a stone in a pond. That’s how our thinking is when we synthesize; we build on our thoughts as we read. See an example college essay written entirely through synthesis… Where there are gaps, we know we have to use other strategies or other resources to address them. Our final thoughts are the big ideas that we reach by the end of our reading. Whew! You may want to add Post-it notes within the book as reminders to stop and talk. Note that synthesizing is not the same as summarizing. However, as we continue reading, our thinking evolves, changes, and grows as we learn new information. (Check out one of the bazillion websites on Bloom’s Taxonomy […] Each new thought expands from the previous thought. Create an anchor chart using the ripple visual. is a unit that builds students' ability to use the strategy from the ground up, from establishing a clear b It’s small because we only have a small amount of information. In other words, our thinking goes through many changes, just like the caterpillar, and we come out of a text with a new understanding, just as the butterfly is new. It requires students to dig a little deeper into the text and process what they are reading. They’re also skills that students struggle with and often confuse despite the differences. A summary restates the information in one or more sources without providing new insight or reaching new conclusions. 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