Summaries and More Summaries
Sometimes I think summary writing will be my undoing this year. My students do summaries with just about everything they read. And yet they still struggle writing them when it counts. I encourage students to use their resource (the book) to help them. As I have been thinking through what students will do during State assessments (Yes, its before Spring Break.) I think I'm going to use two different apps to make it fun.
The first is free, Story Spine.
I have my students either do their summary as they are reading or after they have read. This app allows them to type it in to write in complete sentences and then generate it. This app does not have any export options, so students will need to rewrite their summary. I think this app because it will force them to think deep about what they read. Examples to come.
The other app is Comic Life ($): The idea for this app came from the need to find something that targets a variety of learning styles. Comic Life helps students to develop their writing skills and it has options of adding pictures. Its a tool for students who need practice at writing and are ready to connect images with text. It will help students to show how they analyze information included in the written book. I'm hoping that this tool with help my students (they are reading at different levels) create summaries with pictures to support the text to give others enough of a clue of what happened to understand what is going on in the story. And for other just the organization alone would be helpful to help them and be more interested in writing.
I'm hoping for this app will support my students need to draw through visual representation of knowledge. Its easier for them to recall visual information, engaging them through thinking, creating, and writing. Motivate them to write more and provide a means for them to organize their thinking. Check out this site for lesson plan ideas and examples using Comic Life. Examples to come. Do you have any great ideas to help students with writing summaries? Have a great week.
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Hi, I've never seen Story Spine before. I really like it, and I'll like it even better when they add an exporting option. I posted about a summarizing activity that I came up with earlier this year. You can read about it here: http://new-in-room-202.blogspot.com/2013/01/texting-in-class.html. Thanks for sharing, ~Stacy
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