Inside This Week’s Episode: Teaching elementary students to synthesize information they’re reading can often feel like an uphill battle! In this episode, you’ll learn how to take this complex reading comprehension strategy and break it down into simple steps that your students can master!

Does Teaching Students to Synthesize Feel like pulling teeth?

It sure does…. sometimes. But why is teaching this reading comprehension strategy so hard?

There are a number of reasons students often struggle with synthesizing. One- it’s an abstract concept. Asking students to synthesize requires more than just surface-level thinking. They have to think beyond the text in order to form a synthesis. Two - it’s a multi-level strategy. Synthesizing can’t be taught in isolation. This strategy requires students to draw upon other skills and strategies, like determining importance, or inferring, and using schema in order to form a true synthesis!

So what’s a teacher to do? Throw spaghetti at the all and hope something sticks?

Nah - I’ve got a better teaching strategy for you - and we cover it all in this podcast episode.

We’ll talk about the hurdles and roadblocks and that students face when learning this strategy. We’ll overcome the common mistakes made by teachers AND students when it comes to fully understanding what synthesizing a text truly means.

So - keep your spaghetti in the pot, and have a listen!

Who’s Ready to Make Teaching Students to Synthesize easy?

Here’s a Snapshot:

• [03:03] Synthesizing is one of the most challenging reading strategies for students to master simply because it requires students to use multiple skills and multiple strategies together. If we want them to do more than just provide a retelling of the story, we have to teach them to synthesize. In doing so, they are going to internalize it. They're going to grow and change as thinkers because of the texts that they read.

• [4:09] Synthesizing is not a summary. A synthesis can include parts of a summary or retelling of a text, but that's not where it stops. Synthesizing requires readers to take that summary or that partial retelling and add in their own thoughts, their own experiences, opinions, interpretations, and connections to generate new and bigger ideas. It goes beyond the text.

• [6:28] Synthesizing is all about fulling understanding the text and through synthesizing, we can create a new understanding, a deeper understanding, or a changed understanding.

• [8:05] Compare a synthesis to water ripple formed by a pebble. This analogy helps students to understand that a synthesis is about how our thinking grows and changes over time. The ripple image is that visual reminder for students that our thinking starts small, just like when you first drop that pebble into the water, it grows over the course of a text, just as the ripples get wider. One ripple has stemmed from the other.

Links & Resources Mentioned in the Episode

Reading Comprehension Strategies Podcast Episodes:

• EPISODE 41: Teaching Reading Comprehension Strategies

• EPISODE 42: Reading Comprehension Instruction: How to Teach Making Connections

• EPISODE 47: Reading Comprehension Strategies: How to Teach Visualizing

• EPISODE 51: Reading Comprehension Strategies: How to Teach Making Predictions

• EPISODE 56: Boost Reading Comprehension: A Simple Approach to Teaching Students to Ask Questions While Reading

• EPISODE 59: A Step-By-Step Guide to Teaching Determining Importance in the Upper Elementary Classroom

• EPISODE 64: Helping Your Students Make Inferences When They Read

Learn more about the 3 Types of Synthesizing HERE

List of Aesop’s Fables

Reading with Meaning by Debbie Miller

T Chart and Anchor Chart example: Use this chart to teach students to difference between a summary and a synthesis.

Get access to all of my reading comprehension LINKtivities inside the LINKtivity® Learning Membership

Grab my FREE Synthesizing Bookmark below:

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Transcript