Standard 2: Reading and Writing Process

Students will use a variety of recursive reading and writing processes.

Student Actions 

Teacher Actions 

• Students will condense ideas keeping the meaning, essential information, and order of the text.

• Teachers provide examples of effective and ineffective summaries for students to study.
• Teachers provide time for students to write summaries from a variety of literary and informational texts.

• Students will paraphrase ideas by changing the vocabulary and structure of statement while keeping the author's intended purpose.

• Teachers provide examples of effective paraphrases for students to study.
• Teachers provide time for students to paraphrase a variety of literary and informational texts.

Supporting Resources 

Teacher Insights 

elaokframeworks.pbworks.com: Paraphrasing Literacy Progression (website)

OWL Purdue: Summarizing vs. Paraphrasing (website)

OWL Purdue: Paraphrasing Tips (website)

• While summarizing, paraphrasing, and synthesizing all involve re-telling or restating information, there are subtle differences between these skills and cannot be used interchangeably.

• Summarizing, paraphrasing, and synthesizing are all separate ways of conveying an author’s ideas; they each have different purposes and procedures.

• In terms of narrowing down ideas of a text, the process would start at the top being the most specific and authentic, working down to the most broad.

• Original Text

• Summarize

• Synthesize

• To summarize is to reduce large selections of text to their base essentials: the gist, the key ideas, the main points that are worth noting and remembering. It is shorter than the original text.

• Students struggle with selecting which details to include and often write summaries that include too many details.

• Only details/ideas pertaining to the overall understanding of the text should be used in a summary.

• A summary should remain objective and maintain the same order as the original text.

• To paraphrase is to restate another writer’s words into your own words.

• A paraphrase should maintain the same meaning as the original text and will usually be about the same length--as the intent is to restate rather than shorten. Paraphrasing will include more than just the main ideas.

• This differs from summarizing as its aim is to simplify and clarify, rather than just restate main ideas.

• To synthesize is to create original thoughts, perspectives, and understanding by reflecting on a text(s) and merging elements from text and pre-existing schema. This can be done by summarizing or paraphrasing portions of a text and then connecting it to pre-existing schema.

• Synthesis is not a summary. A summary is only a part of synthesis as a whole.

• Original insight needs to be a new idea, not one taken straight from the text but created by the student’s interpretation of the text and personal perspective or a combination of texts.

• This can be done by personal connection as well as with connections between texts.

• Literary Text Example: Students will read texts (e.g. stories, poems, novels) that deal with grief and demonstrate comprehension of the main ideas. Then students will use their understanding of the main ideas and synthesize them to form an original insight about how people effectively and ineffectively deal with grief.

• Informational Text Example: Students will read multiple articles on the same topic that present different perspectives on the same issue. Then students will synthesize the information to form an original claim using supporting details from all sources to support that claim.

Due to recursive nature of the standards, it is essential that teachers are aware of how all objectives within and between strands work together for optimal instruction.