Marzano Ch 3-Summarizing & Note Taking
Written on August 5, 2008 – 5:32 pm | by Ed Warkentin
Another post in the continuing series of posts on Classroom Instruction that Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement…
Generalities from the research on Summarizing:
1. To effectively summarize, students must delete some information, substitute some information, and keep some information.
2. To effectively delete, substitute, and keep information, students must analyze the information at a fairly deep level.
3. Being aware of the explicit structure of information is an aid to summarizing information.
Classroom Practice in Summarizing:
“Rule-Based” Strategy: This strategy is one of following a set of rules or steps that produce a summary. Here are the rules:
•Delete trivial material that is unnecessary to understanding.
•Delete redundant material.
•Substituting superordinate terms for lists (e.g, “flowers” for “daisy, tulips, and roses”)
•Select a topic sentence, or invent one if it is missing
There are several Summary Frames provided in the book. Here’s the list:
•Narrative Frame
•Topic-Restriction-Illustration Frame
•Definition Frame
•Argumentation Frame
•Problem/Solution Frame
•Conversation Frame
Here are a few for you to download (Narrative, Topic-Restriction, Definition). I’m interested in using them in my classroom; I’m also interested in how you might use them in your classroom. Please comment on this article if you have any feedback on these, and any ideas of how you might use them (or some that I have not typed, but are included in the book) in your classroom.
Generalities from the research on Note Taking:
1. Verbatim note taking is, perhaps, the least effective way to take notes.
-When students are trying to record everything they hear or read, they are not engaged in the act of synthesizing information.
-Trying to record all of what is heard or read takes up so much of a student’s working memory that she does not have “room” to analyze the incoming information.
2. Notes should be considered a work in progress.
-Review and revise the notes; correct misconceptions
3. Notes should be used as study guides for tests.
-Frequently, students don’t know about this, or how to structure time to take advantage of this.
4. The more notes that are taken, the better.
-This is opposite to a common misconception that “less is more.” In fact, many universities explicitly advise students to keep their notes brief, and not put too much material in notes.
Classroom Practice in Note Taking:
Teacher-Prepared Notes
…provide students a clear picture of what the teacher considers important.
…provide students with a model of how notes might be taken.
Formats for Notes
-No one correct way (Cornell style or otherwise)
-Informal Outline – indenting indicates major ideas and their related details
-Webbing – uses relative sizes of circles to indicate the importance of ideas & lines to indicate relationships
-Combination of the two – one on each side of the page; the right side of the page would display the information in some visual way
-At the end of the note-taking, or periodically throughout the process, take a strip across the bottom and summarize what has been learned. My own observation is that this does not have to be at the bottom of the piece of paper. This could be in the middle of the page, and class could continue on the same or related topic the next day.
